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CONTENTS

“ Preface

BOOK I

page 7

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

The Formative Years, 1889-1918

109

The Years of Struggle, 1919-1924

III

The Years of Waiting, 1924-1931

The Months of Opportunity,

168

October, 1931-30 January, 1933

BOOK II

‘■V

VII

VIII
IX

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Revolution after Power, 30 January, 1933-August, 1934 229
The Counterfeit Peace, 1933-1937

The Dictator „ .

From Vienna to Prague, 1938-1939
Hitler’s War, 1939

book III

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

X The Inconclusive Victory, 1939-1940

XI “The World Will Hold Its Breath, 1940-1941

XII The Unachieved Empire, 1941-1943

Xni Two Julys, 1943-1944

XIV The Emperor Without His Clothes

517

560

59 ^

645

69C

73f

Bibliography

Index

EPILOGUE

731

75t

ILLUSTRATIONS

Adolf Hitler

Frontispiece

At the age of thirty-four

Facing

page

208

At Munich in the early 1920s

208

Leaving a Party meeting

Between pages 208-9

In Weimar, 1926

208-9

With President Hindenburg

208-9

In Potsdam Garrison Church, 1933

208-9

In the Sportpalast

Facing

page

209

At the Nuremberg Paiteitagy 1934

209

The Berghof

528

The Fuehrer’s study at the Berghof

528

Eva Braun

Between pages

528-9

Hitler and Eva Braun

528-9

With Tiso, 1939

528-9

WiA Franco, 1940

528-9

Hitler and his"* Generals in 1941

Facing page

529

After 20'' July, 1944

529

MAPS AND CHARTS

Austria and South Germany, to illustrate Hitler’s early life 19

Hitler’s Ancestry 22-23

German Annexations, 1938-1939 400-401

Expansion of Hitler’s Empire, 1938-1943 624-625

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

i WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE the permission of the Controller, H.M.
Stationery Office to quote fiom publications issued by the British Govern-
ment. I wish to express my gratitude to the authors, editors, publishers and
agents concerned for permission to quote from the following books: Mein
Kampf (translated by James Murphy), and My Fart in Germany's Fight —
Hurst & Blackett, Ltd. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler (cd. Norman H Baynes);
Documents on International Affairs, 1936 and 1939-1946 — Oxford University
Press and Royal Institute of International Affairs. Hitler Directs His War
(ed. F. Gilbert) — Oxford University Press, Inc., New York. The French Yellow
Book; The Polish White Book; The Last Attempt, by B. Dahlerus, and My
War Memories, by Gen. Ludendoiff— Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), Ltd.
Failure of a Mission, by Sir N. Henderson — Raymond Savage, Ltd. I Paid
Hitler, by Fritz Thyssen — Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd. Hitler Speaks, by Her-
man Rauschmng, and The Royal Family of Bay tenth, by F. Wagner — ^Eyre
& Spottiswoode (Publishers), Ltd. Hitler as War-Lord, by Franz Haider —
Putnam & Co., Ltd. Ciano's Diary, 1939-1943 — Wm. Heinemann, Ltd.
Ciano's Diplomatic Papers — Odhams Press, Ltd. Der Fuehrer, by K. Heiden —
Victor Gollancz, Ltd., and the Houghton Mifflin Co. A History of National
Socialism, by K. Hciden — Methuen & Co., Ltd. The Goebbels Diaries, and
Berlin Diary, by W. L. Shirer — Hamish Hamilton, Ltd. The Last Days of
Hitler, by H. R. Trevor-Roper, and The Life of Neville Chamberlain, by
K. Feiling — Macmillan & Co., Ltd. Hitler and 1, by Otto Strassejr — Inter-
national Press Alliance Corporation. Hitlers Tischgespiache and Statist auf
diplomatischer Buhne, by Paul Schmidt — ^Athenaum Verlag, The Second World
War, vol. I, by Winston S, Churchill — Cassell & Co., Ltd., and the Houghton
Mifflin Co.; Farewell Austria, by K. von Schuschnigg, and The Other Side of
the Hill, by B. H. Liddell-Hart — Cassell & Co., Ltd. Defeat in the West, by
Milton Shulman, and Hitler and His Admirals, by A. Martiennsen — Seeker &
Warburg, Ltd. To the Bitter End, by H. B. Gisevius — Jonathan Cape, Ltd.,
and the Houghton Mifflin Co. Hitler the Pawn, by R. Olden — Victor Gol-
lancz, Ltd. The Fateful Years, by A. Frangois-Poncet — ^Victor Gollancz, Ltd.,
and Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc. The Memoirs of Ernst von Weizsdcker —
Victor Gollancz, Ltd., and the Henry Regneiy Co. Panzer Leader, by Heinz
Guderian — Michael Joseph, Ltd. Hitler, by K. Heiden — Constable & Co.,
Ltd. Account Settled, by H. Schacht — Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Ltd. The Errant
Diplomat, by O, Dutch — Arnold & Co. The Fall of the German Republic — Allen
& Unwin, Ltd. The Cut tain Falls, by Count Bernadotte— Alfred Knopf, Inc.
The Struggle for Europe, by Chester Wilmot, and Rommel, by Desmond

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Y oung — Collins, Sons and Co., Ltd. HegeVs Lectures on the Philosophy ofHistoiy
— G. Bell & Sons, Ltd. Die Deutsche Katastrophe^ by Fr. Meinecke — ^Eberliard
Brockhaus Verlag. Rdtsel urn Deutschland, by B. Schwertfeger — Carl Winter
Univeisitatsverlag. Les Lettres Secretes echangees par Hitler et Mussolini —
Editions du Pavois. Hitler Privat, by A. Zoller — Droste Verlag. Austrian
Requiem, by K. von Schuschmgg — ^Victor Gollancz, Ltd., and G. P. Putnam’s
Sons. Blue Print of the Nazi Underground, by R. W. M. Kempner — Research
Studies of the State College of Washington. Von Schleicher, von Papen et
VA\enement de Hitler, by G. Castellan — Cahiers d’Histoire de la Guerre,
Pans. Reichswehr and National Socialism, by Gordon A. Craig — Political
Science Quarterly, lAY,MyNew Order (ed. Count Roussy de Sales) — Harcourt,
Brace 8c Co , Inc , Der letze Monat, by Karl Roller — Norbert Wohlgemuth
Verlag. Die leizen 30 Tage, by Joachim Schultz — Steingruben Verlag. Rosen-
beig's Memoirs — Ziff-Davis Publishing Co. 1 Knew Hitlei, by K. Ludecke
— Jarrolds, Publishers (London), Ltd., and Hitler's Words by Gordon W,
Prange — Public Affiirs Press, Washington.

Quotations have been made from a number of other books which lack of
space prevents me from acknowledging individually. Full acknowledgement
is, however, given in the bibliography at the end of the book and in the
footnotes, and I am grateful to all those who have granted me permission to
quote. In some cases it has proved impossible to locate sources of copyright
property. If, therefore, any quotations have been incorrectly -acknowledged I
hope the persons concerned v/ill accept my apologies.

I also wish to acknowledge permission to reproduce copyright photographs
from the Imperial War Museum and Picture Post Library.

ABBREVIATIONS

The/ollowing abbreviations have been used in the footnotes :

N.D. : Nuremberg Documents presented m evidence at the trial before

« the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.
The reference numbers (e.g., 376-PS) are the same m all publi-
cations.

N.P. : Nuremberg Proceedings. The Trial of German Major War Crimi-

nals, Proceedings of the International Military Ti ibunal Sitting at
Nuremberg, 22 Parts. (H.M.S.O., London, 1946-1950.)

N.C.A.: Nazi Conspiracy and Aggtession; 8 vols. plus 2 supp. vols. (U.S.

Govt. Printing Office, Washington, 1946-1948.)

Brit. Doc. : Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, edited by E. L.

Woodward and Rohan Butler. (H.M.S.O., London, 1946.)
G.D.: Documents on German Foteign Policy, 1918-1945, From the

Archives of the German Foreign Ministry, (H.M.S.O., London,
1948-19—.)

Baynes: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, edited by Norman H. Baynes, 2

vols. (Oxford U.P. for R.LI.A., 1942.)

Prange: Hitler's Words, edited by Gordon W. Prange. (American Council

on Foreign Relations, Washington, 1944.)

BOOK I

PARTY LEADER

1889-1933

CHAPTER ONE

THE FORMATIVE YEARS

1889—1918

Adolf hitler was born at half past six on the evening of
20 April, 1889, in the Gosthof zum Pommet\ an inn in the small town
of Braunau on the River Inn which forms the frontier between Austria
and Bavaria,

The Europe into which he was born, and which he was finally to
destroy, gave an unusual impression of stability and permanence at the
time of his birth. The Hapsburg Empire, of which his father was a minor
official, had survived the storms of the 1860s, the loss of the Italian
provinces, defeat by Prussia, even the transformation of the old Empire
into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Hapsburgs, the oldest
of the great ruling houses, who had outlived the Turks, the French
Revolution and Napoleon, were a visible guarantee of continuity.
The Emperor Franz Joseph had already celebrated the fortieth anni-
versary of his accession, and had still more than a quarter of a century
left to reign.

The three republics Hitler was to destroy, the Austria of the Treaty
of St. Germain, Czechoslovakia and Poland, were not yet in existence.
Four great empires — the Hapsburg, the Hohenzollern, the Romanov
and the Ottoman — ruled over Central and Eastern Europe. The Bol-
shevik Revolution and the Soviet Union were not yet imagined: Russia
was still the Holy Russia of the Tsars. In the summer of this same
year, 1889, Lenin, a student of nineteen in trouble with the authorities^
moved with his mother from Kazan to Samara. Stalin was a poor
cobbler’s son in Tiflis, Mussolini the six-year-old child of a blacksmith
m the bleak Romagna.

Hitler’s family, on both sides, came from the Waldviertel, a poor,
remote country district, lying on the north side of the Danube, some
fifty miles north-west of Vienna, between the Danube and the frontiers

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1939

of Bohemia and Moravia. In this countryside of hills and woods, with
few towns or railways, lived a peasant population cut off from the
main arteries of Austrian life. It was from this country stock, with
its frequent intermarriages, that Hitler sprang.

The family name first appears in the village of Walterschlag, where
a Stephen Hiedler’s birth is recorded in the year 1672. (The name
is variously and carelessly written as Hitler, Hiedler, Hiitler and
Htittler.) It was at Walterschlag that the great-grandfather of the
future Chancellor, Martin Hiittler, was born in 1762. Later he moved
to Spital, another village not far away, where he lived until his death
in 1829. His son, Johann Georg Hiedler, seems to have been a wanderer
who never settled down, but followed the trade of a miller in several
places in Lower Austria. In the course of these wanderings he picked
up with a peasant girl from the village of Strones, Maria Anna Schickl-
gruber, whom he married at Dollersheim in May, 1842.

Five years earlier, m 1837, Maria had had an illegitimate child,
who was known by the name of Alois and who was probably the child
of Johann Georg Hiedler. The evidence is inconclusive. For although
Johann Georg married Maria in 1842, he did not bother to legitimize
the child, who continued to be known by his mother’s maiden name
of Schicklgruber until he was nearly forty and who was brought up
at Spital in the house of his father’s brother, Johann von Nepomuk
Hiitler. Maria died in 1847, but Johann Georg made one final re-
appearance nearly thirty years later. On 6 June, 1876, when an old man
of eighty-four, he appeared before a notary in the town of Weitra and
there testified in the presence of witnesses that he was the father of the
illegitimate child, Alois Schicklgruber, whose mother he had sub-
sequently married.

Nothing is known of the old man in the intervening thirty years, of
his relations with his son, or why he took such a step at this particular
time. But later that year, on 23 November 1876, the parish priest at
Ddllersheim, acting upon the declaration made to the notary at Weitra,
altered Alois Schicklgruber’ s name in the baptismal register to that
of Alois Hitler. Thus from the beginning of 1877, twelve years before
Adolf Hitler’s birth, his father called himself Hitler, and his son was
never known as anything other than Adolf Hitler, until his political
opponents in Vienna dug up the facts about his parentage in the 1930s,
and without any justification tried to label him with his grandmother’s
maiden name of Schicklgruber.^

Alois was only ten when his mother died, and he continued to live

^ For a genealogical table setting out Hitler’s ancestry, see pages 22 and 23.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

with liis uncle at Spital. He learned the trade of a cobbler from one ot
Ills relations in the village, but he seems to have inherited something
of his father’s restlessness. Instead of settling down, he left home to
seek his fortune, and, after working as a shoemaker in Vienna, at
eighteen joined the border police in the Austrian Customs Service near
Salzburg. At twenty-seven he was promoted and, eleven days afterwards
(in 1864), he married Anna Glasl-Horer, the adopted daughter of a
customs collector.

For the next sixteen years Alois Schicklgruber served as a customs

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official in Braunau and other towns on the frontier with Bavaria, a
distance from his homeland in Lower Austria. His job as a minor
official, and his marriage to another official’s daughter, who brought a
dowry with her, marked a step up in the social scale. He seems to have
resumed relations with his native village of Spital, and it was in con-
nection with an inheritance from his uncle, Johann von Nepomuk
Hutler, that he took the step of legitimizing himself and changing his
name.

The marriage, however, was not a success. There were no children,
and, after a separation, Alois’ wife, who was considerably older and
had long been ailing, died in 1883. A month later Alois married a young
hotel cook, Franziska Matzelberger, who had already borne him a

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

son out of wedlock and who gave birth to a daughter, Angela, three
months after their marriage.

Alois had no better luck with his second marriage. Within a year of
her daughter’s birth, Franziska was dead of tuberculosis. This time
he waited half a year before marrying again. His third wife, Klara Polzl,
twenty-three years younger than himself, came from the village of
Spital, where the Hitlers had originated and where her own family had
been settled for at least four generations. The two families were already
related by marriage, and Klara herself was Alois’ second cousin and
the granddaughter of that Johann von Nepomuk Hiitler in whose
house Alois had been brought up as a child. She had even lived with
Alois and his first wife for a time at Braunau, but at the age of twenty
had gone off to Vienna to earn her living as a domestic servant. An
episcopal dispensation had to be secured for such a marriage between
second cousins, but finally, on 7 January, 1885, Alois Hitler married
his third wife, and on 17 May of the same year their first child, Gustav,
was born at Braunau.

Adolf was the third child of Alois Hitler’s third marriage Gustav
and Ida, both born before him, died in infancy; his younger brother,
Edward, died when he was six, only his younger sister, Paula, born m
1896, lived to grow up. There were also, however, the two children of
the second marriage with Franziska, Adolf Hitler’s half-brother Alois,
and his half-sister Angela. Angela was the only one of his relations
with whom Hitler maintained any sort of friendship. She kept house
for him at Berchtesgaden for a time, and it was her daughter, Geli
Rai^bal, with whom Hitler fell in love.

When Adolf Hitler was born his father was fifty and his mother was
twenty-eight. Alois Hitler was not only very much older than Klara
and her children, but hard, unsympathetic and short-tempered. His
domestic life — three wives, one fourteen years older than himself, one
twenty- three years younger; a separation, and seven children, including
one illegitimate child and two others born shortly after the wedding —
suggest a difficult and passionate temperament. Towards the end of
his life Alois Hitler seems to have become bitter over some disappoint-
ment, perhaps connected with another inheritance. He did not go back
to his native district when he retired in 1895 at the early age of fifty-
eight. Instead he stayed in Upper Austria. From Passau, the German
frontier town, where Alois Hitler held his last post, the family moved
briefly to Hafeld-am-Traun and Lambach before they settled at Leon-
ding, a viEage just outside Linz, overlooking the confluence of the Traun

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

and the Danube. Here the retired customs official spent the remaining
years of his life in a small house with a garden.

The year his father retiied the six-year-old Adolf entered the village
school of Fischlham, two years later he was sent to the school of the
ancient Benedictine monastery at Lambach and became a choris-
ter. He had a year in school at Leonding, and then in 1900 entered the
Linz Realschule. Again Alois showed his ambition: it was a considerable
step for him to send his son to a secondary school and it cost money,
but he wanted the boy to get on in the world and follow his own career
of an official. With his gold-bordered velvet cap and the title of Herr
Oberoffizial, on which he insisted, this was to him the height of attain-
ment. ‘The characteristic pride of the self-made man,” Hitler wrote
in Mein Kampf, “urged him towards the idea that his son should follow
the same calling and, if possible, rise to a higher position in it.”^
Despite Nazi hagiography, there is nothing to suggest anything at
all distinctive about Hitler as a boy. He did quite well at school and
spent much of his time playing in the fields and woods along the Traun.
He has been described as the natural leader of the children in their
games — ^which may or may not be true. Not until he went to the Lmz
Realschule at the age of eleven is there any incident of interest m his
life. At that time a conflict sprang up between the boy and his stubborn,
sixty-year-olcl father. Hitler’s own account in Mein Kampf represents
the quarrel as due to a difference about his future career:

I would not become a civil servant. No amount of pei suasion and no
amount of grave warnings could break down that opposition. . . . One
day it became clear to me that I would be a painter, I mean an artist, . . .
My father was speechless. “A painter? An artist?” he exclaimedr He
wondered whether I was m a sound state of mind. He thought that he
might not have caught my words lightly, or that he had misunderstood
what I said. But when I had explained my ideas to him and he saw how
seriously I took them, he opposed them with that full determination which
was characteristic of him. . . . “Artist! Not as long as I live, never.” . . .
At that our struggle became stalemate. My father would not abandon his
“Never,” I became all the more consolidated in my “Nevertheless.” ^

When the older man attempted to assert his parental authority, the boy
(according to his own later account) maintained a stubborn silence
and paid his father back by refusing to work at any subject except those
which really interested him. “I thought that once it became clear to my
father that I was making no progress at the Realschule, he would be

^ Mem Kampf, page 21 The edition referred to throughout this book is the unex-
purgated translation by James Murphy (Hurst & Blackett, London, 1939).

Ibid., pages 21-2.

STEPH A N HIEDLER = AGNES «

of Walterschkg
(b. 1672)

JOHANN HIEDLER = MARIA ANNA NEUGSCHWANDTER '
of Walterschlag I of Walterschlag

(b.i7n) ^ ^

ANNA MARIA GOSCHL = MARTIN HUTTLER
(of Spital i76o-i 8£'4) (b. 1762 at Walterschlag

d. 1829 at Spital)

MARIA ANNA JOHANN JOHANN v.

SCHICKLGRUBER « GEORG HIEDLER NEPOMUK HUTLER = EVA MARIA DECKER
(of Strones, 179^-1847) (b. 1792 at Spital, (of Spital, 1807-1888) | (of Spital 1792-1873)

d. after 1877) I

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

in and out of the Home m the Meldemannstrasse, as against the working
men who belonged to organizations like the Social Democratic Party
and the trade unions and who preached equality and the solidarity of
the working classes. It was these, much more than the former, who
threatened his claim to superiority. Solidarity was a virtue for which
Hitler had no use. He passionately refused to join a trade union, or
in any way to admit that he accepted the status of a working man.

The whole ideology of the working-class movement was alien and
hateful to him:

All that I heard had the effect of arousing the strongest antagonism in
me. Everything was disparaged— -the nation because it was held to be an
invention of the capitalist class (how often I had to listen to that phrase!);
the Fatherland, because it was held to be an instrument in the hand of the
bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the working masses; the authority of
the law, because this was a means of holding down the proletariat; religion,
as a means of doping the people, so as to exploit them afterwards; mora-
lity, as a badge of stupid and sheepish docility. There was nothing that
they did not drag in the mud. . . . Then I asked myself: are these men
worthy to belong to a great people? The question was profoundly dis-
turbing; for if the answer were “Yes,” then the struggle to defend one’s
nationality is no longer worth all the trouble and sacrifice we demand of
our best elements if it be in the interest of such a rabble. On the other hand,
if the answer had to be “No,” then our nation is poor indeed in men. During
these days of mental anguish and deep meditation I saw before my mind
the ever-mcreasing and menacing army of people who could no longer
be reckoned as belonging to their own nation.^

Hitler found the solution of his dilemma in the “discovery” tliat^he
working men were the victims of a deliberate system for corrupting and
poisoning the popular mind, organized by the Social Democratic
Party’s leaders, who cynically exploited the distress of the masses for
their own ends Then came the crowning revelation: “I discovered the
relations existing between this destructive teaching and the specific
character of a people, who up to that time had been almost unknown
to me. Knowledge of the Jews is the only key whereby one may under-
stand the inner nature and the real aims of Social Democracy.”^

There was nothing new in Hiller’s anti-Semitism; it was endemic
m Vienna, and everything he ever said or wrote about the Jews is only
a reflection of the anti-Semitic periodicals and pamphlets he read in
Vienna before 1914. In Linz there had been very few Jews — “I do not
remember ever having heard the word at home during my father’s
^ Mem Kampf, pages 46-7. ^ Ibid., page 55.

L.H. — B

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

lifetime.” Even in Vienna Hitler had at first been repelled by the violence
of the anti-Semitic Press. Then, “one day, when passing through the
Inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan
and wearing black sidelocks. My first thought was: is this a Jew? They
certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I watched the man
stealthily and cautiously, but the longer I gazed at this strange coun-
tenance and examined it section by section, the more the question shaped
itself in my brain: is this a German? I turned to books for help in
removing my doubts. For the first time in my life I bought myself some
anti-Semitic pamphlets for a few pence.”^

The language in which Hitler describes his discovery has the obscene
taint to be found m most anti-Semitic literature: “Was there any shady
undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which
at least one Jew did not participate? On putting the probing knife care-
fully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot
in a putrescent body, a little Jew who was often blinded by the sudden

light.”2

Especially characteristic of Viennese anti-Semitism was its sexuality.
“The black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end, satanically
glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce,
adulterating her blood and removing her from the bosom of her own
people. . . . The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the
Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race which
they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the
Jew might dominate,”^ Elsewhere Hitler writes of “the nightmare
vision of the seduction of hundreds of thousands of girls by repulsive,
crooked-legged Jew bastards.” Rudolf Olden may well be right in
regarding tortured sexual envy as one of the roots of Hitler’s anti-
Semitism.

In all the pages which Hitler devotes to the Jews in Mein Kampf
he does not bring forward a single fact to support his wild assertions.
This was entirely right, for Hitler’s anti-Semitism bore no relation to
facts, it was pure fantasy: to read these pages is to enter the world of
the insane, a world peopled by hideous and distorted shadows. The
Jew is no longer a human being, he has become a mythical figure, a
grimacing, leering devil invested with infernal powers, the incarnation
of evil, into which Hitler projects all that he hates and fears— -and desires.
Like ail obsessions, the Jew is not a partial, but a total explanation.
The Jew is eveiywhere, responsible for everything — the Modernism in
art and music Hitler disliked; pornography and prostitution; the anti-
^ Mem Kampf, page 59. “ Ibid., page 60. ® Ibid., page 273.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

national criticism of the Press; the exploitation of the masses by Capital-
ism, and its reverse, the exploitation of the masses by Socialism; not
least for his own failure to get on. “Thus I finally discovered who were
the evil spirits leading our people astray. . . . My love for my own people
increased correspondingly. Considering the Satanic skill which these
evil counsellors displayed, how could their unfortunate victims be
blamed? . . . The more I came to know the Jew, the easier it was to
excuse the workers.”^

Behind all this, Hitler soon convinced himself, lay a Jewish world
conspiracy to destroy and subdue the Aryan peoples, as an act of revenge
for their own inferiority. Their purpose was to weaken the nation by
fomenting social divisions and class conflict, and by attacking the values
of race, heroism, struggle, and authoritarian rule in favour of the false
internationalist, humanitarian, pacifist, materialist ideals of democracy.
“The Jewish doctrine of Marxism repudiates the aristocratic principle
of nature and substitutes for it and the eternal privilege of force and
energy, numerical mass and its dead weight. Thus it denies the individual
worth of the human personality, impugns the teaching that nation-
hood and race have a primary significance, and by doing this takes away
the very foundations of human existence and human civilization.”^

In Hitler’s eyes the inequality of individuals and of races was one of
the laws of Nature. This poor wretch, often half-starved, without a
job, family or home, clung obstinately to any belief that would bolster
up the claim of his own superiority. He belonged by right, he felt, to
the Herrenmenschen. To preach equality was to blaspheme against the
Ark of the Covenant, to threaten the belief which kept him going, Miat
he was different fiom the labourers, the tramps, the Jews and the
Slavs with whom he rubbed shoulders in the streets.

Hitler had no use for any democratic institution: free speech, free
press or parliament. During the earlier part of his time in Vienna he
had sometimes attended the sessions of the Reichsrat, the representative
assembly of the Austrian half of the Empire, and he devotes fifteen pages
of Mein Kampf to expressing his scorn for what he saw. Parliamentary
democracy reduces government to political jobbery, it puts a premium
on mediocrity and is inimical to leadership, encourages the avoidance
of responsibility and sacrifices decisions to party compromises. “The

majority represents not only ignorance but cowardice The majority

can never replace the man.”^

All his life Hitler was irritated by discussion. In the arguments into

^ Mein Kampf, pages 63-4. * Ibid., pages 65-6. ^ Ibid., page 81.

PART^' LEADER, 1889-1933

which he was drawn m the Home for Men or in cafes he showed no self-
control in face of contradiction or debate. He began to shout and
shower abuse on his opponents, with an hysterical note in his voice.
It was precisely the same pattern of uncontrolled behaviour he dis-
played when he came to supreme power and found himself crossed or
contradicted. This authoritarian temper developed with the exercise of
power, but it was already there in his twenties, the instinct of
tyranny.

Belief m equality between races was an even greater otfence in Hitler’s
eyes than belief in equality between individuals. He had already become
a passionate German nationalist while still at school. In Austria-
Hungary this meant even more than it meant in Germany itself, and
the fanatical quality of Hitler’s nationalism throughout his life reflects
his Austrian origin.

For several hundred years the Germans of Austria played the leading
part in the politics and cultural life of Central Europe. Until 1871 there
had been no single unified German state. Germans had lived under
the rule of a score of different states — Bavaria, Prussia, Wurttemberg,
Hanover, Saxony — loosely grouped together in the Holy Roman Empire,
and then, after 1815, in the German Federation. Both in the Empire and
in the Federation Austria had enjoyed a traditional hegemony as the
leading German Power In the middle of the nineteenth century it was
still Vienna, not Berlin, which ranked as the first of German cities.
Moreover, the Hapsburgs not only enjoyed a pre-eminent position
anfong the German states, but also ruled over wide lands inhabited by
many different peoples.

On both counts the Germans of Vienna and the Austrian lands,
who identified themselves with the Hapsburgs, looked on themselves
as an imperial race, enjoying a position of political privilege and boasting
of a cultural tradition which few other peoples in Europe could equal
From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, this position was
first challenged and then undermined.

In place of the German Federation a unified German state was estab-
lished by Prussia, from which the Germans of Austria were excluded.
Prussia defeated Austria at Sadowa in 1866, and thereafter the new
German Empire with its capital at Berlin increasingly took the place
hitherto occupied by Austria and Vienna as the premier German
state.

At the same time the pre-eminence of the Germans within the Haps-
burg Empire itself was challenged, first by the Italians, who secured

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

their independence in the i860s; then by the Magyars of Hungary,
to whom equality had to be conceded m 1867 ; finally by the Slav peoples.
The growth of the demand for equal rights among the Slavs and other
subject peoples was slower than with the Magyars, and uneven in its
development. But especially in Bohemia and Moravia, where the most
advanced of the Slav peoples, the Czechs, lived, it was bitterly resented
by the Germans and fiercely resisted. This conflict of the nationalities
dominated Austrian politics from 1870 to the break-up of the Empire
in 1918.

In this conflict Hitler had no patience with concessions. The Germans
should rule the Empire, at least the Austrian half of it, with an authori-
tarian and centralized administration; there should be only one official
language — German — and the schools and universities should be used
“to inculcate a feeling of common citizenship,” an ambiguous expres-
sion for Germanization. The representative assembly of the Reichsrat,
in which the Germans (only thirty-five per cent of the population of
Austria) were permanently outnumbered, should be suppressed. Here
was a special reason for hatred of the Social Democratic Party, which
refused to follow the nationalist lead of the Pan-Germans, and instead
fostered class conflicts at the expense of national unity.

In September, 1938, at the time of the Sudeten crisis, Hitler said in
a newspaper interview: “The Czechs have none of the characteristics
of a nation, whether from the standpoint of ethnology, strategy, econo-
mics, or language. To set an intellectually inferior handful of Czechs
to rule over minorities belonging to races like the Germans, Poles,
Hungarians, with a thousand years of culture behind them, was a work
of folly and ignorance.”^ This was a view which Hitler first learneS in
Austria before 1914, and indeed the whole Czech crisis of 1938-1939
was part of an old quarrel rooted deep in the history of the Hapsburg
Empire from which Hitler came.

The influence of his Austrian origins is even more obvious in the case
of the Anschluss, the incorporation of Austria in the German Reich,
which Hitler carried out at the beginning of 1938. Long before 1914
extreme German nationalists in Austria had begun to talk openly of
the break-up of the Hapsburg Empire and the reunion of the Germans
of Austria with the German Empire. Hapsburg policy m face of the
national conflicts which divided their peoples had been uncertain and
vacillating. To the Pan-German extremists of Schoenerer’s Deutsch-
nationaler Verein this appeared as a betrayal of the German cause. In
Mein Kampf asked:

^ Interview with G. Ward Price, published in the Daily Mad, 19 September, 1938.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

How could one remain a faithful subject of the House of Hapsburg, whose
past history and present conduct proved it to be ready ever and always
to betray the interests of the German people? . . . The German Austrian
had come to feel in the very depth of his being that the historical mission
of the House of Hapsburg had come to an end. . . . Therefore I welcomed
every movement that might lead towards the final disruption of that im-
possible State which had decreed that it would stamp out the German
character m ten millions of people, this Babylonian Empire. That would
mean the liberating of my German Austrian people and only then would
It become possible for them to be reunited to the Motherland.^

When Hitler returned to Vienna after the Anschluss had been carried
out and the dream of a Greater Germany which Bismarck had rejected
had at last been fulfilled, he said with a touch of genuine exultation:
“I believe that it w^as God’s will to send a boy from here into the Reich,
to let him grow up and to raise him to be the leader of the nation so
that he could lead back Ws homeland into the Reich.”^ In March, 1938,
the Austrian-born Chancellor of Germany reversed the decision which
Bismarck, a Prussian-born Chancellor, had made in the 1860s when
he excluded the German Austrians from the new German Reich. The
Babylonian captivity was at an end.

The political ideas and programme which Hitler picked up in Vienna
were entirely unoriginal. They were the cliches of Radical and Paii-
Gefman gutter politics, the stock-m-trade of the anti-Semitic and
nationalist Press. The originality was to appear in Hiller’s grasp of how
to create a mass-movement and secure power on the basis of these
ideas. Here, too, although he took no active part in politics, he owed
much to observations drawn from his years m Vienna.

The three parties which interested Hitler were the Austrian Social
Democrats, Georg von Schoenerer’s Pan-German Nationalists and
Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party.

From the Social Democrats Hitler derived the idea of a mass party
and mass propaganda. In Mem Kampfhe describes the impression made
on him when “I gazed on the interminable ranks, four abreast, of
Viennese workmen parading at a mass demonstration. I stood dumb-

^ Mem Kampf, pages 26, 91 and 44.

2 Hitler’s speech m Vienna, 9 April, 1938, in Norman Baynes (ed.): The Speeches
of Adolf Hitler, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1942), vol. II, page 1,457 (hereafter referred to as
Baynes).

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

founded for almost two hours, watching this enormous human dragon
which slowly uncoiled itself before me.”'*-
Studying the Social Democratic Press and Party speeches, Hitler
reached the conclusion that: “the psyche of the broad masses is acces-
sible only to what is strong and uncompromising. . . . The masses of
the people prefer the ruler to the suppliant and are filled with a stronger
sense of mental security by a teaching that brooks no rival than by a
teaching which offers them a liberal choice. They have very little idea
of how to make such a choice and thus are prone to feel that they have
been abandoned. Whereas they feel very little shame at being terrorized
intellectually and are scarcely conscious of the fact that their freedom
as human beings is impudently abused. ... I also came to understand
that physical intimidation has its significance for the mass as well as
the individual . . . For the successes which are thus obtained are
taken by the adherents as a triumphant symbol of the righteousness
of their own cause; while the beaten opponent very often loses faith
in the effectiveness of any further resistance.”^

Georg Ritter von Schoenerer, who founded the Pan-German move-
ment in Austria, came from the same district near Spital as Hitler’s
family. From Schoenerer Hitler took his extreme German Nationalism,
his anti-Socialism, his anti-Semitism, his hatred of the Hapsburgs and
his programme of reunion with Germany. But he learned as much from
the mistakes which Schoenerer and the Nationalists committed in their
political tactics. For Schoenerer, Hitler believed, made three cardinal
errors.

The Nationalists failed to grasp the importance of the social problem,
directing their attention to the middle classes and neglecting the masses.
They wasted their energy in a parliamentary struggle and failed to
establish themselves as the leaders of a great movement. Finally they
made the mistake of attacking the Catholic Church and split their forces
instead of concentrating them. “The art of leadership,” Hitler wrote,
“consists of consolidating the attention of the people against a single
adversary and taking care that nothing v/ill split up this attention. . . .
The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents
appeal as if they belonged to one categoiy.”^

It was in the third party, the Christian Socialists, and their remarkable
leader, Karl Lueger, that Hitler found brilliantly displayed that grasp
of political tactics, the lack of which hampered the success of the
Nationalists. Lueger had made himself Burgomaster of Vienna — in
^ Mem Kampf, page 47. ^ Ibid., pages 48-50. ® Ibid., page 110.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

many ways the most important elective post in Austria— and by 1907
the Christian Socialists under his leadership had become the strongest
party in the Austrian parhament. Hitler saw much to criticize in Lueger’s
programme. His anti-Semitism was based on rehgious and economic,
not on racial, grounds (“I decide who is a Jew,” Lueger once said),
and he rejected the intransigent nationalism of the Pan-Germans, seeking
to preserve and strengthen the Hapsburg State with its mixture of
nationalities. But Hitler was prepared to overlook even this in his
admiration for Lueger’s leadership.

The strength of Lueger’s following lay in the lower middle class of
Vienna, the small shopkeepers, business men and artisans, the petty
officials and municipal employees. “He devoted the greatest part of
his political activity,” Hitler noted, “to the task of winning over those
sections of the population whose existence was in danger.”^

Years later Hitler was to show a brilliant appreciation of the impor-
tance of these same classes in German politics. From the beginning
Lueger undei stood the importance both of social problems and of
appealing to the masses. “Their leaders recognized the value of pro-
paganda on a large scale and they were veritable virtuosos in working
up the spiritual instincts of the broad masses of their electorate.”^
Finally, instead of quarrelling with the Church, Lueger made it his
ally and used to the full the traditional loyalty to crown and altar.
In a sentence which again points forward to his later career, Hitler
remarks: “He was quick to adopt all available means for winning the
support of long-established institutions, so as to be able to derive the
greatest possible advantage for his movement from those old sources
of power.”^

Hitler concludes his comparison of Schoenerer’s and Lueger’s
leadership with these words:

If the Christian Socialist Party, together with its shre\\d judgment m
legard to the worth of the popular masses, had only judged rightly also on
the importance of the racial problem— which was properly grasped by the
Pan-German movement — and if this party had been really nationalist;
or if the Pan-German leaders, on the other hand, m addition to their
correct judgment of the Jewish problem and of the national idea, had adopted
the practical wisdom of the Christian-Socialist Party, and particularly their
attitude towards Socialism— then a movement would have developed
which might have successfully altered the course of German destiny.^

Here already is the idea of a party which should be both national
and socialist. This was written a dozen years after he had left Vienna,

^ Mem Kampf, page 95. ^ Ibid , page 111.

3 Ibid , page 95. ^ Ibid., pages 113-4.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

and it would be an exaggeration to suppose that Hitler had already
formulated clearly the ideas he set out in Mein Kampf in the middle
of the 1920s. None the less the greater part of the experience on which
he drew was already complete when he left Vienna, and to the end
Hitler bore the stamp of his Austrian origins.

Hitler left Vienna for good in the spring of 1913. He was then twenty-
four years old, awkward, moody and reserved, yet nursing a passion
of hatred and fanaticism which from time to time broke out in a torrent
of excited words. Years of failure had laid up a deep store of resentment
m him, but had failed to weaken the conviction of his own superiority.

In Mein Kampf Eitkr speaks of leaving Vienna in the spring of 1912,
but the Vienna police records report him as living there until May, 1913.
Hitler is so careless about dates and facts in his book that the later date
seems more likely to be correct. Hitler is equally evasive about the
reasons which led him to leave. He writes in general terms of his dislike
of Vienna and the state of affairs m Austria:

My inner aversion to the Hapsburg State was increasing daily. . . . This
motley of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs and Croats, and
always that bacillus which is the solvent of human society, the Jew, here
and there and everywhere — the whole spectacle was repugnant to me. , . ,
The longer I lived in that city the stronger became my hatred for the pro-
miscuous swaim of foreign peoples which had begun to batten on that
old nurseiy ground of German culture. All these considerations intensi-
fied my yearning to depart for that comitiy for which my heart had been
secretly longing since the days of my youth, 1 hoped that one day I might
be able to make my mark as an architect and that I could devote my talents
to the service of my country. A final reason was that I hoped to be among
those who lived and worked in that land from which the movement should
be launched, the object of which would be the fulfilment of what my heart
had always longed for, the leumon of the country in which I was born with
our common fatherland, the German Empire.^

All this, we may be sure, is true enough, but it gives no specific reason
why, on one day rather than another, Hitler decided to go to the station,
buy a ticket and at last leave the city he had come to detest.

A possible explanation is that Hitler was anxious to escape military
service, for which he had already failed to report. He refused to serve
m an army in which he would have to rub shoulders with Czechs,
^ Mem Kampf, pages 114-5.

LII.- B

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Jews and the other subjects of the hated monarchy. Enquiries, however,
were being made by the police, and he may have found it necessary to
slip over the frontier. Eventually he v/as located in Munich and ordered
to present himself for examination at Linz. Josef Greiner, in his book,
Das Ende des Hitler-Mythos, prints part of the correspondence between
Hitler and the authorities at Linz, in which Hitler denies that he left
Vienna to avoid conscription, and asks, on account of his lack of means,
to be allowed to report at Salzburg, which was nearer to Munich than
Linz. The tone of Hitler’s letter (which is dated 23 January, 1914) is
conciliatory, he evidently recognized that he had put himself in a dan-
gerous position. His request was agreed to, and he duly presented him-
self for examination at Salzburg on 5 February, 1914. He was rejected
for military or auxiliary service on the grounds of poor health, and the
incident was closed. But Greiner adds that when the Germans marched
into Austria m 1938 a very thorough search was made in Linz for the
records connected with Hitler’s military service. Hitler was furious when
the Gestapo failed to discover them. They remained in the possession
of a Dr. Jetzinger, a member of the Upper Austrian Land Government,
who made them available to Herr Greiner.

Whether this is the correct explanation or not, in the early summer
of 1913 Hiller moved to Munich, across the German frontier. He found
lodgings {An soliden Herrn moebliertes Zimmer zu ve/'mie/cn— -“Fur-
nished room for respectable man”) with a tailor’s family, by the name
of Popp, which lived in the Schleissheimerstrasse, a poor quarter near
the barracks. In retrospect. Hitler described this as “by far the happiest
and most contented time of my life. . . . Almost from the first moment
of my stay there I came to love that city more than any other place
known to me. A German city! I said to myself. How different from
Vienna.”^

It may be doubted if this represented Hitler’s feelings at the time. His
life followed much the same pattern as before. His dislike of hard work
and regular employment had by nov/ hardened into a habit. He made a
precarious living by drawing advertisements and posters, or peddling
sketches to dealers. He was perpetually short of money. When Greiner,
who shared liis room for a couple of months, asked him what were his
plans for the future, the best answer he could give was that a war was
certain, and that then it would make no difference v/hether he had a
profession or not Despite his enthusiasm for the architecture and paint-
ings of Munich, he was not a step nearer making a career than he had
been on the day when he was turned down by the Vienna Academy.

^ Mem Kampf, page 117.

THE NORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

In his new surroundings he appears to have lost touch with his relations,
and to have made few, if any, friends.

The shadowy picture that emerges from the reminiscences of the few
people who knew him in Munich is once again of a man living in his
own world of fantasy. He gives the same impression of eccentricity and
lack of balance, brooding and muttering to himself over his extravagant
theories of race, anti-Semitism and anti-Marxism, then bursting out in
wild, sarcastic diatribes. He spent much time in cafes and beer-cellars,
devouring the newspapers and arguing about politics. Frau Popp, his
landlady, speaks of him as a voracious reader, an impression Hitler
more than once tries to create in Mem Kampf, Yet nowhere is there any
indication of the works he read. Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamber-
lain, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Gobineau? Perhaps. But Hitler’s own
comment on reading is illummating. “Reading had probably a different
significance for irie from that which it has for the average run of our
so-called ‘intellectuals.’ I know people who read interminably, book
after book, from page to page. ... Of course they ‘know’ an immense
amount, but . . . they have not the faculty of distinguishing between
what IS useful and useless in a book ; so that they may retain the former
m their minds and if possible skip over the latter. . . . Reading is not
an end in itself, but a means to an end. . . . One who has cultivated
the art of reading will instantly discern, in a book or journal or pamphlet,
what ought to be remembered because it meets one’s personal needs or
is of value as general knowledge.”^

This is a picture of a man with a closed mind, reading only to confirm
what he already believes, ignoring what does not fit m with his pre-
conceived scheme. “Otherwise,” Hitler says, “only a confused jumble of
chaotic notions will result from all this reading. . . . Such a person never
succeeds in turning his knowledge to practical account when the oppor-
tune moment arrives; for his mental equipment is not ordered with a
view to meeting the demands of everyday life.”^ Hitler was speaking the
truth when he said: “Since then [i e., since his days in Vienna] I have
extended that foundation very little, and I have changed nothing in it.”^

Hitler retained his passionate interest in politics. He was indignant at
the ignorance and indifference of people in Munich to the situation of the
Germans in Austria. Since 1879 the two states, the German Empire and
the Hapsburg Monarchy, had been bound together by a military alliance,
which remained the foundation of German foreign policy up to the

^ Mein Kampf, pages 42-3. ^ Ibid. ® Ibid., page 32.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

defeat of 1918, Hitler felt that this predisposed most Germans to refuse
to listen to the exaggerated accounts he gave of the “desperate” position
of the German Austrians m the conflict of nationalities within the
Monarchy.

Hitler’s objection to the alliance of Germany and Austria was twofold.
It crippled the Austrians in their resistance to what he regarded as
the deliberate anti-German policy of the Hapsburgs. At the same time,
for Germany herself it represented a dangerous commitment to the
support of a state which, he was convinced, was on the verge of disinte-
gration. Hitler would have agreed with the view expressed by Ludendorff
in his memoirs: “A Jew m Radom once said to one of my officers that
he could not understand why so strong and vital a body as Germany
should ally itself with a corpse. He was right.”^

When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by Serbian students at
Sarajevo on 28 June, 1914, Hitler’s first reaction was confused. For, in
his eyes, it was Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Hapsburg throne, who
had been more responsible than anyone else for that policy of conces-
sions to the Slav peoples of the Monarchy which roused the anger of the
German nationalists in Austria But, as events moved towards the out-
break of a general European war, Hitler brushed aside his doubts. At
least Austria would be compelled to fight, and could not, as he had
always feared, betray her ally Germany. In any case, “I believed that it
was not a case of Austria fighting to get satisfaction from Serbia, but
rather a case of Germany fighting for her own existence— the German

nation for its own to be or not to be, for its freedom and for its future

Foe me, as for every other Geiman, the most memorable period of my
life now began. Face to face with that mighty struggle, all the past fell
away into oblivion.”^

There were other, deeper and more personal reasons for his satis-
faction. War meant to Hitler something more than the chance to express
his nationalist ardour, it offered the opportunity to slough off the
frustration, failure and resentment of the past six years. Here was an
escape from the tension and dissatisfaction of a lonely individuality into
the excitement and warmth of a close, disciplined collective hfe, m which
he could identify himself with the power and purpose of a great organiz-
ation. “The war of 1914,” he wrote m Mem Kampf, “was certainly not
forced on the masses; it was even desired by the whole people”— a
remark which illustrates at least this man’s state of mind. “For me these
hours came as a deliverance from the distress that had weighed upon me

^ General Ludendorff. My War Memoirs (London, n d.), vol. I, page 117.

^ Mem Kampf, pages 146-7.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

during the days of my youth. I am not ashamed to acknowledge today
that I was carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment and that 1
sank down upon my knees and thanked Heaven out of the fullness of my
heart for the favour of having been permitted to live in such a

On 1 August Hitler was in the cheering, singing crowd which gathered
on the Odeons Platz to listen to the proclamation declaring war. In a
chance photograph that has been preserved his face is clearly recogniz-
able, his eyes excited and exultant; it is the face of a man who has come
home at last. Two days later he addressed a formal petition to King
Ludwig in of Bavaria, asking to be allowed to volunteer, although of
Austrian nationality, for a Bavarian regiment. The reply granted his
request. “I opened the document with tiembling hands; no words of
mine can describe the satisfaction I felt. . , . Within a few days I was
wearing that uniform which I was not to put off again for nearly six
years.”^

Together with a large number of other volunteers he was enrolled in
the 1st Company of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment,
known from its original commander as the List Regiment. Another
volunteer in the same regiment was Rudolf Hess; the regimental clerk
was a Sergeant-major Max Amann, later to become business manager
of the Nazi Party’s paper and of the Party publishing house. After a
period of initial training in Munich, they spent several weeks at Lechfeld,
and then on 21 October, 1914, entrained for the Front.

After two days’ journey they reached Lille and were sent up into the
line as reinforcements for the 6th Bavarian Division of the Bavarian
Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Vlth Army. Hitler’s first experience^ of
fighting was m one of the fiercest and most critical engagements of the
war, the First Battle of Ypres, when the British succeeded in stemming
an all-out effort by the Germans to burst through to the Channel coast.
For four days and nights the List Regiment was in the thick of the
fighting with the British round Becclaere and Glieluvelt. In a letter to
Ills old Munich landlord, the tailor Herr Popp, Hitler reported that
when they were pulled out of the line and sent into rest billets at Werwick
the regiment had been reduced in four days from three thousand
five hundred to six hundred men; only thirty officers were left and four
companies had to be broken up.

Throughout the war Hitler served as a Meldeganger, a runner whose
job was to carry messages between Company and Regimental H.Q
His two closest comrades were Ernst Schmidt-— -one of the sources for
^ Mem Kampfy page 145. - Ibid., page 147.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

this period of his life— and another Meldeganger called Bachmann, who
was later killed in Rumania. Although Hitler was not actually in the
trenches, there is little doubt that his was a dangerous enough job, and
for the greater part of four years he was at the Front or not far m the
rear.

In 1915, after a period at Tourcoing, the List Regiment was moved up
towards Neuve Chapelle, again opposite British troops. In 1916 they
took part in the heavy fighting on the Somme, and in October found
themselves near Bapaurne. Here on 7 October Hitler was wounded m
the leg, and was sent back to Germany for the first time for two years.

After a period in hospital at Beehtz, near Berlin, and at Munich with
the Reserve battalion of his regiment, he returned to the Front at the
beginning of March, 1917, now promoted to lance-corporal He was in
lime to take part m the later stages of the Battle of Arras and in the
Third Battle of Ypres in the summer. After two months at Hochstadt,
in Alsace, the List Regiment was back in the Ime on the Aisne, near Lizy,
for the winter. With the rest of the regiment I^tler went forward in the
last great German offensive in the spring of 1918.

In October, 1918, the List Regiment found itself back near Warwick,
south of Ypres. During the night of 13-14 October the British opened
a gas attack. Hitler was caught on a hill south of Warwick and his
eyes were affected. By the time he got back to Rear H.Q. he could no
longer see. On the morning of 14 October he collapsed and, temporarily
blinded, was put into a hospital tram and sent back to a military hospital
at Pasewalk, in Pomerania, not far from Stettin. He was still there,
recovering from the injury to his eyes, when the war ended with the
capitulation of 1 1 November.

What sort of a soldier was Hitler? As early as December, 1914, he had
been awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, and when Hitler m March,
1932, brought a lawsuit against a newspaper which had accused him of
cowardice, his former commanding ofiicer, Lieutenant-Colonel Engel-
iiardt, testified to his bravery in the fighting of November, 1914, when
the regiment had first gone into action. Much more interesting is the
Iron Cross, First Class, an uncommon decoration for a corporal, which
Hitler was av/arded in 1918. The most varied and improbable accounts
have been given of the action for which he won this. The date on which
he received the award was 4 August, 1918, but dates ranging over a
46

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

period from the autumn of 1915 to the summer of 1918 have been
suggested for the exploit for which it was given. According to one
witness, single-handed he took prisoner fifteen (others say ten or twelve)
Frenchmen; according to another they w^ere Englishmen. The official
history of the List Regiment says nothing at all. Whatever the occasion,
it was certainly a decoration of which Hitler was proud and which he
habitually wore after he had become Chancellor.

In view of his long service and the shortage of officers in the German
Army in the last months of the war, the fact that Hitler never rose above
the rank of corporal aroused curiosity and was much discussed m the
German Press before 1933. There is no evidence that Hitler ever applied
or was eager for promotion to the rank of non-commissioned officer,
leave alone a commission. He appears to have been content with the job
he had. It is probable, also, that the impression of eccentricity which he
continued to give was no recommendation. Hans Mend, another of
Hitler’s fellow-soldiers in the List Regiment, wrote of him as “a peculiar
fellow. He sat in the corner of our mess holding his head between his
hands, in deep contemplation. Suddenly he would leap up, and, running
about excitedly, say that in spite of our big guns victory would be
denied us, for the invisible foes of the German people were a greater
danger than the biggest cannon of the enemy.” This led to violent
attacks on the Marxists and Jews, in the old style of the Vienna Home
for Men. On other occasions, Mend recalls, "‘he sat in a corner, with his
helmet on his head, buried deep in thought, and none of us was able to
rouse him from his listlessness.”^

While not unpopular with his comrades, they felt that he did not
share their interests or attitude to the war. He received no letters; no
parcels from home. He did not care about leave or women. Fie was silent
when the others grumbled about the time they had to spend in the
trenches or the hardships. “We all cursed him and found him intolerable.
There was this white crow among us that didn’t go along with us when
we damned the war.”^

The few photographs of this time seem to bear this out — a solemn pale
face, prematurely old, with staring eyes. Fie took the war seriously,
feeling personally responsible for what happened, and identifying himself
with the failure or success of German arms. These were not endearing
qualities, but they do not detract from Hitler’s good record as a soldier,
at least as brave as the next man and a good deal more conscientious.

Many years afterwards Hitler would still refer to “the stupendous
impression produced upon me by the war — the greatest of all experi-
^ Olden: pages 70-1. * Heiden: Der Fuehrer, page 74

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

dices. For, that individual interest — ^the interest of one's own ego —
could be subordinated to the common interest — that the great, heroic
struggle of our people demonstrated in overwhelming fashion.”^ Like
many other Gemans, Hitler regarded the comradeship, discipline and
excitement of life at the Front as vastly more attractive than the
obscurity, aimlessness and dull placidity of peace. This was particularly
true of Hitler, for he had neither family, wife, job nor future to which
to return; there was much greater warmth and friendliness in the
orderlies’ mess than he had known since he left Linz. This was his
world: here he had a secure place such as he had never found in Vienna
or Munich. In the years after the war it was from ex-servicemen like this
who felt more at home in a uniform, living in a mess or barracks, men
who could never settle down into the monotonous routine of life in
“Civvy Street” that the Freikorps,^ the Nazis and a score of extremist
parties recruited their members. The war, and the impact of war upon the
individual lives of millions of Germans, were among the essential
conditions for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

It IS surprising, in view of his later pretensions as a strategist in the
Second World War, that Hitler has nothing to say m Mem Kampf about
the conduct of the military operations. At the time he wrote his book he
was still too anxious to secure the favour of the Army leaders to indulge
in the attitude of contempt he later adopted towards the generals. In any
case, Hitler followed the conventional Nationalist line of argument: the
German Army had never been defeated, the war had been lost by the
treachery and cowardice of the leaders at home, the capitulation of
November, 1918, was a failure of political not military leadership.

At the time of his stay m hospital at Beelitz and his visit to Munich
(October, 19 Id-March, 1917) Hitler became indignant at the con-
trast between the spirit of the Army at the Front and the poor morale
and lack of discipline at home. There he encountered shirkers who
boasted of dodging military service, grumbling, profiteering, the black
market, and other familiar accompaniments of wartime civilian life; it
was with relief that he returned to the Front. Hitler had no use for a
government which tolerated political discussion, covert anti-war prop-
aganda and strikes in time of war. In Mein Kampf his contempt for
parliamentary deputies and journalists is lavish: “All decent men who
had anything to say, said it point-blank in the enemy’s face; or, failing

^ Speech at Hamburg, 17 August, 1934. Baynes, vol. I, page 97.

^ liiegal armed bands which were an important feature of German life after the war
and which v/ere given covert support by the Army as a means of evading the de-
militarization imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

THE FORMATIVE YEARS, 1889-1918

this, kept their mouths shut and did their duty elsewhere Uncompro-
mising military measures should have been adopted to root out the evil.
Parties should have been abolished and the Reichstag brought to its
senses at the point of the bayonet, if necessary. It would have been still
better if the Reichstag had been dissolved immediately.”^

This is no more than the common talk of any one of the ex-servicemen’s
(Frontkdmpfer) associations which sprang up after the war and com-
forted their wounded pride by blaming Socialist agitators, Jews, pro-
fiteers and democratic politicians for the “shameful treachery” of the
“Stab in the Back.” But Hitler adds a characteristic twist which shows
once more the originality of his ideas as soon as he was faced with a
question of political leadership. It was not enough, he concluded, to use
force to suppress the Socialist and anti-national agitation to which he
attributed the sapping of Germany’s will to go on fighting. “If force be
used to combat a spiritual power, that force remains a defensive measure
only, so long as the wielders of it are not the standard bearers and
apostles of a new spiritual doctrine ... It is only in the struggle between
Weltanschauungen^ that physical force, consistently and ruthlessly
applied, will eventually turn the scale in its own favour.”^ This was the
reason for the failure of every attempt to combat Marxism hitherto,
including the failure of Bismark’s anti-socialist legislation — “it lacked
the basis of a new Weltanschauung^

Out of this grew the idea of creating a new movement, something
more than a parliamentary party, which would fight Social Democracy
with its own weapons. For power lay with the masses, and if the hold of
the Jew-ridden Marxist parties on their allegiance was to be broken, a
substitute had to be found. The key, Hitler became convinced, lay in
propaganda, and the lesson Hitler had already drawn from the Social
Democrats and Lueger’s Christian Socialists m Vienna was completed
by his observation of the success of English propaganda during the war,
by contrast with the failure of German attempts. The chapter on War
Propaganda in Mein Kampf is a masterly exercise in that psychological
insight which was to prove Hitler’s greatest gift as a politician.

There were two themes on which Hitler constantly played in the years
that followed the war: Man of the People, and Unknown Soldier of the
First World War. When he spoke to the first Congress of German
Workers in Berlin on 10 May, 1933, he assured them: “Fate, in a
moment of caprice or perhaps fulfilling the designs of Providence, cast
^ Mein Kampf ^ pages 149 and 151.

^ A favourite word of Hitler’s, meaning “World view,” or “Philosophy of life.”

3 A/fpin Knmnf nacrft

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

me into the great mass of the people, amongst common folk. I myself
was a labouring man for years in the building trade and had to earn my
own bread. And for a second time I took my place once again as an
ordinary soldier amongst the masses.*'^ These were the twin foundations
of his demagogy and, in however garbled a fashion, they correspond to
the two formative experiences of his life, the years in Vienna and
Munich, and the years at the Front.

Those years between the end of 1908 and the end of 1918 had hardened
him, taught him to be self-reliant, confirmed his belief in himself,
toughened the power of his will. From them he emerged with a stock of
fixed ideas and prejudices which were to alter little in the rest of his
life: hatred of the Jews; contempt for the ideals of democracy, inter-
nationalism, equality and peace; a preference for authoritarian forms of
government; an intolerant nationalism; a rooted belief in the inequality
of race and individuals, and in the heroic virtues of war. Most important
of all, in the experiences of those years he had already hit upon a con-
ception of how political power was to be secured and exercised which,
when fully developed, was to open the way to a career without parallel in
history. Much of what he had learned remained to be formulated even in
his own mind, and had still to be crystallized into the decision to become
a politician. But the elements for such a decision were already complete;
it required only a sudden shock to precipitate it. That shock was supplied
by the end of the war, the capitulation of Gcimany and the overthrow
of the Empire.

^ Baynes: vol. I, page 862.

CHAPTER TWO

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE

1919—1924

The NEWS THAT GERMANY had lost the wat and was suing for peace
came as a profound shock to the German people and the German Army.
The first half of 1918 had seen some of the most spectacular German
successes of the whole war. In March and May — only a few months
before the capitulation — Germany had signed the Treaties of Brest-
Litovsk and Bucharest, each marking massive accessions to German
power in Eastern Europe. The defeat of Russia and Rumania, and the
end of the “war on two fronts,” had been followed in the west by the
opening of the greatest offensive of the war. On 21 March, 1918, Luden-
dorff began a series of attacks in France in which he drove the British
and French Armies back and advanced the German line within forty
miles of Paris. In the early summer of 1918 the Germans believed
themselves at last to be within sight of victory.

The swift reversal of this situation in August and September was kept
from the German people, and the announcement at the beginning of
October, 1918, that the German Government had asked for terms of
peace stunned and bewildered the nation. Not until 2 October were the
leaders of the Reichstag parties informed of the seriousness of the
military situation. In his Memoirs, Prince Max of Baden, the new Chan-
cellor who was to negotiate the surrender, wrote: “Up to this moment

the Home Front had stood unbroken Now the spark leaped across to

the people at home. There was panic in Berlin.”^

The situation of the German Army by November, 1918, was in fact
without hope. It was only a matter of time before it was driven back
into Germany and destroyed. Yet, at the moment when the German
Government signed the capitulation, the German Army still stood out-
side Germany’s frontiers and still preserved an unbroken front in the
west. Moreover, although the initiative for ending the war had come
^ Prince Max of Baden: Memoirs, vol II, page 12.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

from the High Command, from General Ludendorif himself, this fact
was concealed. The High Command not only left the civil government,
hitherto denied any voice in the conduct of the war, to take the full
responsibility for ending it, but tried to dissociate itself from the con-
sequences of the decision into which it had rushed the Government
against the cooler judgment of men like Prince Max. Here was the germ
of the legend of the “Stab in the Back.”

The end of the war brought the collapse of the Imperial regime and the
reluctant assumption of power by the democratic parties in the Reich-
stag. The Republican Government had to bear the odium of signing, first
the surrender and then the peace terms. It was easy for the embittered
and unscrupulous to twist this into the lie that the Social Democrats and
the Republican parties had deliberately engineered the capitulation,
betrayed Germany and stabbed the German Army in the back, in order
to hoist themselves into power. The fact that the Provisional Govern-
ment, led by the Social Democrats, sacrificed party and class interests to
the patriotic duty of holding Germany together in a crisis not of their
making, was brushed aside. These were the “November criminals,” the
scapegoats who had to be found if the Army and the Nationalists were
to rescue anything from the wreck of their hopes. Rarely has a more
fraudulent he been foisted on a people, yet it was persistently repeated
and widely believed — ^because so many wanted to believe it.

Any society is bound to be shaken by the experience of violence and
suiferings involved m years of war. The effect was doubly severe in
Germany since war had led to defeat, sudden, unexpected defeat.
Thfoughout Central and Eastern Europe the end of the war was marked
by a senes of revolutionary changes. The Hapsburg, the Hohenzollern
and the Ottoman Empires followed the Romanovs into oblivion. The
political and social structure of half Europe was thrown into the melting-
pot. It was a time of widespread unrest, insecurity and fear in all Europe
east of the Rhine In Germany, where people now found themselves
faced with new sacrifices demanded by the Peace Treaty and Repar-
ations, this condition lasted for five years, until the end of 1923 It was
during that restless and disturbed period that Hitler first made his mark
as a politician.

The threat to the stability of the new Republican regime came, not
only from the extremists of the Left who sought to carry out a social
revolution on a Communist pattern, but equally, perhaps even more,
from an intransigent Right, in whose eyes the Republic was damned
from birth. It was associated with the Surrender, a shameful and delib-

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

erate act of treachery, as most of them soon came to regard it. In 1919 the
Republican Government signed a Peace Treaty the terms of which were
universally resented in Germany; this v/as looked upon as a fresh act of
betrayal, and the Government was henceforward branded as the agent
of the Allies in despoiling and humiliating Germany. The fact that its
institutions were democratic, that the Social Democratic Party and the
working-class organizations supported it, and that there was a demand
for more radical action from the Left — finding expression m workers’
demonstrations, strikes and, on occasion, street fighting — added to the
hostility with which the extremists of the Right viewed the new r6gime.
It was openly said that loyalty to the Fatherland required disloyalty to
the Republic.

This mood was not only to be found among the classes which had
hitherto ruled Germany, and ruled it in their own interests, the noble
families, the Junkers, the industrialists, the big business men and the
German Officer Corps. It was also characteristic of many wartime
officers and ex-servicemen, who resented what they regarded as the in-
gratitude and treachery of the Home Front and the Republic towards the
Ffontkampfer, They identified their own personal grievances of unem-
ployment, the loss of their privileged position as officers, their inability
and reluctance to exchange their waitime life for a humdrum peace-
time existence, with the losses and humiliations for Germany which were
the inevitable consequences of defeat and which were accepted, as they
had to be, by the Republican Government.

In this way the malaise which is the inevitable sequel to a long period
of war found a political form. It was canalized into a campaign of
agitation and conspiracy against the existing regime, a campaign in
which fiee use was made of the habits of violence learned m the years of
war. No one has described this frame of nund better than Hitler himself.
In the speech of 13 July, 1934, m which he justified his action in the
Roehm Purge, ^ he spoke

of those revolutionaries whose former relation to the State was shattered
by the events of 1918 : they became uprooted and thereby lost altogether all
sympathy with any ordeied human society. They became revolutionaries
who favoured revolution for its own sake and desired to see revolution
established as a permanent condition. . . ,

Amongst the documents which during the last week it was my duty to
read, I have discovered a diary with the notes of a man who, m 1918, was
thrown into the path of resistance to the Law and who now lives in a world
m which law in itself seems to be a provocation to resistance. It is ... an

^ See below. Chapter Five.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

unbroken tale of conspiracy and continual plotting: it gives one an msigiit
into the mentality of men who, without realizing it, have found in nihilism
their final confession of faith3

It was this mood of discontent which Hitler was to exploit, and of
which he himself at that time furnished a typical example.

When the war ended and the Republic was proclaimed, Hitler was
still in hospital at Pasewalk. The acknowledgement of Germany’s defeat
and the establishment of a democratic Republic, in which the Social
Democrats played the leading part, were both intolerable to him. Every-
thing with which he had identified himself seemed to be defeated, swept
aside in a torrent of events which had been released, as he had no doubt,
by the same Jews who had always desired the defeat and humiliation
of Germany.

Like many others among the mob of demobilized men who now found
themselves flung on to the labour market at a time of widespread un-
employment, he had little prospect of finding a job. The old problem of
how to make a living, conveniently shelved for four years, reappeared.
Characteristically, Hitler turned his back on it. ‘T was forced now to
scoff at the thought of any personal future, which hitherto had been the
cause of so much worry to me. Was it not ludicrous to think of building
up anything on such a foundation?”^ He was not interested in work, in
finding a steady job; he never had been. After all, what had he to lose in
the break-up of a world in which he had never found a place? Nothing.
What had he to gam in the general unrest, confusion and disorder?
Everything, if only he knew how to turn events to his advantage. With
a sure instinct, he saw in the distress of Germany the opportunity he had
been looking for but had so far failed to find.

“At that juncture innumerable plans took shape in my mind. . . . Un-
fortunately, every project had to give way before the hard fact that I was
quite unknown and therefore did not have even the first prerequisite
necessary for effective action.”^ None the less, he did not despair. With
considerable naivety, he wrote in Mein Kampf: ‘“Generally speaking, a
man should not take part in politics before he has reached the age of
thirty.”^ Hitler was now in his thirtieth year, the time was ripe and the
decision was taken: “I resolved that I would take up political work.”

But how? Uncertain as yet of the answer. Hitler, after his discharge
from hospital, made his way through a disorganized country back to
Munich. He was still in uniform and still drew his rations and pay from
the Army. In December, 1918, he volunteered for guard duty in a

^ Speech to the Reichstag, 13 My, 1934; Baynes: vol. I, pages 300-2.

2 Mem Kampf, page 178. ® Ibid , page 179. ^ Ibid , page 67.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

prisoner-of-war camp at Traunstein, near the Austrian frontier. By the
end of January, hov/ever, the prisoners — ^mostly Russians, with a few
English — ^were sent home, and the camp closed; Hitler had to return to
Munich. It was there in the next few months that he found the answer to
his question.

Few towns in the Reich were as sensitive to the mood of unrest as
Munich: its political atmosphere was unstable and exaggerated towards
one extreme or the other. During the war Hitler himself had remarked
that bad morale and war-wearmess were more pronounced in Munich
than in the north. The revolution of 1918 broke out in Munich before
Berlin, and the Wittelsbach King of Bavaria was the first to abdicate. In
the first sLx months of 1919 political violence was an everyday occurrence
in Munich, Kurt Eisner, the man who had led the Bavarian revolution of
November, 1918, was murdered in February. A Social Democratic
government under Hoffman only lasted until 6 April, when, under the
influence of Bela Kun’s Communist regime in Hungary, a Soviet re-
public was proclaimed m Munich too. This m turn lasted less than a
month, and was accompanied by quarrelling, uproar and the utmost
confusion, all of which left an indelible impression on the Bavarians. At
the beginning of May, the Raterepublik was overthrown by a combined
force of regular troops and Freikorps volunteers. A bloody revenge was
exacted, and many people were shot in the wave of suppression which
followed. Hoffman’s government was nominally restored, but the events
of May, 1919, marked a decisive swing to the Right in Bavarian politics.

In Bavaria ever since the unification of Germany, there had been a
traditional dislike of government from Prussian and Protestant Berlin, a
sentiment which found expression after the war in demands for greater
autonomy, and even in a separatist programme for a complete break
with Northern Germany in favour of a Catholic, South German Union
with Austria. The constitution of the Weimar Republic afforded con-
siderable opportunity for the expression of this Bavarian particularism,
for, alongside the central Reich government in Berlin, the old German
states — Bavaria, Prussia, Wurttemberg, Saxony, etc. — each retained its
own State government and representative assembly (Landtag), which
exercised powers of considerable importance, notably control of the
police. In the disturbed and unstable condition of Germany between
1918 and 1923, the power of the central government in Berlin was
weakened, and the Bavarian State Government was able to exploit a
situation in which the orders of the Reich Government were only re-
spected if they were backed by the support of the authorities in Munich.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

This anomalous position became more marked after March, 1920,
when an attempt to overthrow the Reich Government in Berlin by force
failed (the Kapp Putsch), but a simultaneous coup d’etat succeeded in
Bavaria. On the night of 13-14 March, 1920, the District Commander of
the Reichswher (the German Regular Army), General Arnold von
Moehl, presented the Social Democratic Premier of Bavaria, Johannes
Hoffman, with an ultimatum which led to the establishment of a right-
wing government under Gustav von Kahr, from which the parties of the
Left were excluded. Bavaria was thenceforward ruled by a State govern-
ment which had strong particularist leanings and a Right-wing bias quite
out of sympathy with the policies pursued by the central government in
Berlin. Bavaria thus became a natural centre for all those who were
eager to get rid of the republican regime m Germany, and the Bavarian
Government turned a bhnd eye to the treason and conspiracy against the
legal government of the Reich which were being planned on its doorstep
in Munich. It was in Bavaria that the irreconcilable elements of the Frei-
korps gathered, armed bands of volunteers formed under the patronage
of the Reichswehr at the end of the war to maintain order and protect
the eastern frontiers of Germany against the Poles and the Bolsheviks,
but now just as willing to turn their guns against the Republic. Driven
from Berlin by the failure of the Kapp Putsch, the notorious Captain
Ehrhardt and his Ehrhardt Brigade found shelter in Bavaria, and here
were arranged the murders of Erzberger, the man who had signed the
Armistice of 1918, and Walther Rathenau, Germany’s Jewish Foreign
Minister, who had initiated the policy of fulfilling the provisions of the
Peace Treaty. The Freikorps were the training schools for the political
murder and terrorism which disfigured German life up to 1924, and
again after 1929.

Among the regular officers of the VII District Command of the Army
stationed m Munich were men like Major-General Ritter von Epp and
his assistant, Major Ernst Roehm, who were prepared to give protection
and support to these activities as a way of evading the Treaty of Ver-
sailles’ limitations upon Germany’s military power. In the Freikorps and
in the innumerable defence leagues, patriotic unions and ex-servicemen’s
associations which sprang up m Bavaria, they saw the nucleus of that
future German Army which should one day revenge the humiliations of
1918. When that day would come no one knew, but in the meantime it
was essential to keep together, under one disguise or another, the men
who had been the backbone of the old German Army, which was now
reduced by the terms of the Treaty to a mere hundred thousand in
numbers.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

If necessary there were highly placed officials in most ministries who
had served as reserve officers during the war, or entertained nationalist
sympathies, to whom appeal could be made. It was Poehner, the Police
President of Munich, who gave the famous reply, when asked if he knew
there were political murder gangs m Bavaria: “Yes, but not enough of
them.” Wilhelm Frick, later Hitler’s Minister of the Interior, was
Poehneris assistant; one of his colleagues in the Bavarian Ministry of
Justice was Franz Giirtner, later Hitler’s Minister of Justice.

At the back of the minds of all these men was the dream which be-
witched the German Right for twenty years, the dream of overthrowing
the Repubhc, reversing the decision of 1918, restoring Germany to her
rightful position as the greatest Power of continental Europe and re-
storing the Army to its rightful position in Germany. The obvious first
step was to begin by weakening, obstructing and, if possible, getting nd of
the government in power m Berlin. Such was the promising political
setting in which Hitler began his career.

Hitler lived through the exciting days of April and May, 1919, in
Munich itself. What part he played, if any, is uncertain. According to
his own account in Mein Kampf^ he was to have been put under arrest at
the end of April, but drove off with his rifle the three men who came to
arrest him. Once the Communists had been overthrown, he gave infor-
mation before the Commission of Enquiry set up by the 2nd Infan_^try
Regiment, which tried and shot those reported to have been active on the
other side. He then got a job in the Press and News Bureau of the
Political Department of the Army’s VII (Munich) District Command, a
centre for the activities of such men as Roehm. After attending a course
of “political instruction” for the troops. Hitler was himself appointed a
Bildmgsoffizier (Instruction Officer) with the task of inoculating the men
against contagion by socialist, pacifist or democratic ideas. This was an
important step for Hitler, since it constituted the first recognition of the
fact that he had any political ability at all Then, in September, he was
instructed by the head of the Political Department to investigate a small
group meeting m Munich, the German Workers’ Party, v/hich might
possibly be of interest to the Army.

The German Workers’ Party had its origins in a Committee of Inde-
pendent Workmen (Freier Arbeiter Amschuss\ set up by a Munich lock-

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

smith, Anton Drexler, on 7 March, 1918. Drexler’s idea was to create a
party which would be both working class and nationalist. He saw what
Hitler had also seen, that a middle-class movement like the Fatherland
Front (to which Drexler belonged) was hopelessly out of touch with the
mood of the masses, and that these were coming increasingly under the
influence of anli-national and anti-militarist propaganda. Drexler made
little headway with his committee, though it had links with other groups,
like the Association for the Promotion of Peace on Working-class Lines
in Bremen, and recruited a membership of forty. In January, 1919, how-
ever, he re-formed his organization, merging it^with a similar group, the
Politischer Arbeiter Zirkel, led by a journalist, Karl Harrer. FJarrer
became the first chairman of the new German Workers’ Party. Its total
membership was little more than Drexler’s original forty, activity was
limited to discussions in Munich beer-halls, and the committee of six had
no clear idea of anything more ambitious. It can scarcely have been a
very impressive scene when, on the evening of 12- September, 1919, Hitler
attended his fiist meeting in a room at the Sterneckerbrau^ a Munich
beer-cellar m which a handful of twenty or twenty-five people had gath-
ered. One of the speakers was Gottfried Feder, an economic crank
well known in Munich, who had already impressed Hitler at one of the
political courses arranged for the Army. The other was a Bavarian
separatist, whose proposals for the secession of Bavaria from the
German Reich and a union with Austria brought Hitler to his feet in a
fury. He spoke with such vehemence that when the meeting was over
Drexler went up to him and gave him a copy of his autobiographical
pamphlet, Mein politisches Erwachen} A fev/ days later Flitler received
a postcard inviting him to attend a committee meeting of the German
Workers’ Party.

After some hesitation Hitler went. The committee met in an obscure
beer-house, the Alte Rosenbad, in the Herrnstrasse. ‘T went through the
badly lighted guest-room, where not a single guest was to be seen, and
searched for the door which led to the side room; and there I was face to
face with the Committee. Under the dim light shed by a grimy gas-lamp
I could see four people sitting round a table, one of them the author of
the pamphlet.”^

The rest of the proceedings followed in the same key * the Party’s funds
were reported to total 7.50 marks, minutes were read and confirmed,
three letters were received, three replies read and approved.

Yet, as Hitler frankly acknowledges, this very obscurity was an attrac-
tion. It was only in a Party which, like himself, was beginning at the
^ My Political Awakening. ^ Mem Kampf page 189.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

boLloni that he had any prospect of playing a leading part and imposing
his ideas. In the established Parties tWe was no room for him, he would
be a nobody. After two days’ reflection he made up his mind and joined
the Coi^ittec of the German Workers’ Party as its seventh member.

Thefepirgy and ambition which had been hitherto unharnessed now
found an outlet. Slowly and painfully he pushed the Party forward, and
prodde^* his cautious and unimaginative colleagues on the committee
into bolder methods of recruitment. A few invitations were multigraphed
and diMrlbuted, a small advertisement inserted in the local paper, a
larger hall secured for more frequent meetings. When Hitler himself
spoke for the first time in the Hofbrduhaus Keller m October, a hundred
and eleven people were present. The result was to confirm the chairman,
Karl Harrer, m his belief that Hitler had no talent for public speaking.
But Plitler persisted and the numbers rose. In October there were a
hundred and thirty when Hitler spoke on Brest-Litovsk and Versailles,
a little later there were two hundred.

At the beginning of 1920 Hitler was put in charge of the Party’s prop-
aganda and promptly set to work to organize its first mass meeting. By
the use of clever advertising he got nearly two thousand people into the
Festsaal of the Hofbrduhaus on 24 February. The principal speaker was a
Dr. Dingfeider, but it was Hitler who was forcing the pace, much to the
dislike of Harrer, who resigned from the office of chairman. On 1 April,
1920, Hitler at last left the Army and devoted all his time to building up
the Party, control of which he now more and more arrogated to himself.

Hitler’s and Drexler’s group in Munich was not the only National
Socialist party. In Bavaria itself there were rival groups, such as Julius
Streicher’s German Socialist Party and Dr. Dickel’s Workers’ Associ-
ation in Ausburg, while across the frontier in Austria and in the Sudeten-
land the pre-war German Social Workers’ Party had been reorganized
and got in touch with the new Parly in Munich. A number of attempts
had been made in Austria before 1914 to combine a working-
class movement with a Pan-German nationalist programme. The most
successful was this Deutschsoziale Arbeiterpartei, founded in 1910 by
Dr, Walther Riehl, an Austrian lawyer, and a railway engineer named
Rudolf Jung. In the Austrian elections of 1911 they succeeded in winning
three seats in the Reichsrat. The Party’s programme was formulated
at the Moravian town of Iglau in 1913 , and reflected the bitterness of
the German struggle v/ith the Czechs as well as the attraction of Pan-
German and anti-Semitic ideas.

In May, 1918, this Austrian Party adopted the title of D.N.S.A.P. —
the German National Sociahsts Workers’ Party — and began to use

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

the Hakenkreuz, the swastika, as its symbol. When the Austro-Hun-
garian monarchy was broken up, and a separate Czech State formed,
the National Socialists set up an inter-State bureau with one branch
in Vienna, of which Riehl was chairman, and another in the Sudeten-
land. It was this inter-State bureau which now invited the co-operation
of the Bavarian National Socialists, and a Munich delegation attended
the next joint meeting at Salzburg in August, 1920. Shortly afterwards
the Munich Party, too, adopted the title of the National Socialist
German Workers’ Party.

Up to August, 1923, when Hitler attended the last of the inter-State
meetings at Salzburg, there were fairly frequent contacts between these
different National Socialist groups, but little came of them. Hitler was
too jealous of his independence to submit to interference from outside,
and the last meeting of the conference, at Salzburg in 1923, led to RiehTs
resignation.

Much more important to Hitler was the support he received from
Major Roehm, on the staff of the Army District Command in Munich
Roehm, who was a man of ability and character, however unpleasant,
exercised considerable influence in the shadowy world of the Freikorps,
Defence Leagues and political conspiracies. He had actually joined
the German Workers’ Party before Hitler, for, hke Hitler, he saw that
it would be impossible to recreate a strong, nationalist Germany until
the alienation of the mass of the people from their old loyalty to the
Fatherland and the Army could be overcome. Any party which could
recapture the working classes for a nationalist and militarist allegiance
interested him. He admired the spirit and toughness of the Communists,
who were prepared to fight for what they beheved m: what he wanted
was working-class organizations with the same qualities on his own
side.

Roehm had little patience with the view that the Army should keep
out of politics. The Army, he believed, had to go into politics if it
wanted to create the sort of State which would restore its old privileged
position, and break with the policy of fulfilling the terms of the Peace
Treaty. This was a view accepted by only a part of the Officer Corps;
others, especially among the senior officers, viewed Roehm’s activities
with mistrust. But there was sufficient sympathy with his aims to allow
a determined man to use the opportunities of his position to the full.

When Hitler began to build up the German Workers’ Party, Roehm
pushed in ex-Freikorps men and ex-servicemen to swell the Party’s
membership. From these elements the first “strong-arm” squads were

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

formed, the nucleus of the S.A. In December, 1920, Roehm had per-
suaded his commanding officer, Major-General Ritter von Epp — him-
self a former Freikorps leader and a member of the Party— -to help
raise the sixty thousand marks needed to buy the Party a weekly paper,
the Volkischer Beobachter} It is possible that the secret funds of the
Army were used to finance this purchase. Above all, Roehm was the
indispensable link m secunng for Hitler the protection, or at least the
tolerance, of the Army and of the Bavarian Government, which de-
pended on the local Army Command as the ultimate arbiter of public
order. Without the unique position of the Army in German, and
especially in Bavarian, politics — its ability to extend powerful support
to the political groups and activities it favoured — Hitler would never
have been able to exercise with impunity his methods of incitement,
violence and intimidation. At every step from 1914 to 1945 Hitler’s
varying relationship to the Army was of the greatest importance to him:
never more so than in these early years in Munich when, without the
Army’s patronage, Hitler would have found the greatest difficulty m
chmbmg the first steps of his political career. Before his death the Army
was to learn the full measure of his ingratitude.

Yet however important this help from outside, the foundation of
Hitler’s success was his own energy and ability as a political leader.
Without this, the help would never have been forthcoming, or would
have produced insignificant results. Hitler’s genius as a politican lay
m his unequalled grasp of what could be done by propaganda, and his
flair for seeing how to do it. He had to learn in a hard school, on his
feet night after night, arguing his case in every kind of hall, from the
smoke-filled back room of a beer-cellar to the huge auditorium of the
Zirkus Krone; often, m the early days, in the face of opposition, in-
difference or amused contempt; learning to hold his audience’s atten-
tion, to win them over ; most important of all, learning to read the minds
of his audiences, finding the sensitive spots on which to hammer. '‘He
could play like a virtuoso on the well-tempered piano of lower middle-
class hearts,”^ says Dr. Schacht. Behind that virtuosity lay years of
experience as an agitator and mob orator. Hitler came to know Germany
and the German people at first hand as few of Germany’s other leaders
ever had. By the time he came to power m 1933 there were few towns
of any size in the Reich where he had not spoken. Here was one great
advantage Hitler had over nearly all the politicians with whom he had

^ Best translated as the “Racist Observer.”

‘Hjalmar Schacht: Account Settled (English translation of Abrechnung mit
Hitler, London, 1949), page 206.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

to deal, Ms immense practical experience of politics, not in the Chan-
cellery or the Reichstag, but in the street, the level at which elections
are won, the level at which any politician must be effective if he is to
carry a mass vote with him.

Hitler was the greatest demagogue in Mstory. Those who add “only
a demagogue’' fail to appreciate the nature of pohtical power in an age
of mass politics. As he himself said: “To be a leader, means to be able
to move masses.”^

The lessons which Hitler drew from the activities of the Austrian
Social Democrats and Lueger’s Christian Socialists were now tried out
in Munich. Success was far from being automatic. Hitler made mistakes
and had much to learn before he could persuade people to take him
seriously, even on the small stage of Bavarian politics. By 1923 he was
still only a provincial politician, who had not yet made any impact on
national politics, and the end of 1923 saw the collapse of his movement
in a fiasco. But Hitler learned from his mistakes, and by the time he came
to write Mem Kampfin the middle of the 1920s he was able to set down
quite clearly what he was trying to do, and what were the conditions of
success. The pages in Mein Kampfin which he discusses the technique
of mass propaganda and political leadership stand out in brilliant con-
trast with the turgid attempts to explain his entirely unoriginal political
ideas.

The first and most important principle for political action laid down
by Hitler is : Go to the masses. “The movement must avoid everything
which may lessen or weaken its power of influencing the masses . . .
because of the simple fact that no great idea, no matter how sublime
or exalted, can be realized in practice without the effective power which
resides in the popular masses.”^

Since the masses have only a poor acquaintance with abstract ideas, their
leactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, where the roots of their

positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted The emotional

grounds of their attitude furnish the reason for their extraordmary stability.
It IS always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.
And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous
revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which
has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired
them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action.
Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the
door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude, but a
determined will, backed up by power where necessary.®

^ Mem Kampf, page 474. ^ Ibid., page 101.

® Ibid., page 283.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

Hitler is quite open in explaining how this is to be achieved. “The
receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their under-
standing is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being
the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare neces-
sities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.”^ Hitler
had nothing but scorn for the intellectuals who are always looking for
something new. “Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprint-
ing an idea on the memory of a crowd.”^ For the same reason it is better
to stick to a programme even when certain points m it become out of
date: “As soon as one point is removed from the sphere of dogmatic
certainty, the discussion will not simply result in a new and better
formulation, but may easily lead to endless debates and general con-
fusion.”*^

V/lien you lie, tell big lies. Tiiis is what the Jews do, working on the
principle, “which is quite true in itself, that in the big lie there is always
a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are
always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional
nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive sim-
pheity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than
the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters,
but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would
never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths and they
would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the
truth so infamously. . . . The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces
behind it, even after it has been nailed down.”^

Above all, never hesitate, never qualify what you say, never concede
an inch to the other side, paint all your contrasts in black and while.
This is the “very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind
of propaganda: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every pro-
blem that has to be dealt with. . . . When they see an uncompromising
onslaught against an adversary, the people have at all times taken
this as proof that right is on the side of the active aggressor; but if the
aggressor should go only halfway and fail to push home his success . . .
the people will look upon this as a sign that he is uncertain of the
justice of his own cause.”®

Vehemence, passion, fanaticism, these are “the great magnetic forces
which alone attract the great masses; for these masses always respond
to the compelhng force which emanates from absolute faith m the ideas
put forward, combined with an indomitable zest to fight for and defend

^ Mem Kamp^ page 159. * Ibid., page 163. ® Ibid., page 383.

^ Ibid., pages 198-9. ® Ibid., pages 160-1 and 283.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

them. . , . The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of
glowing passion; but only those who are passionate themselves can
arouse passion in others.”^

Hitler showed a marked preference for the spoken over the written
word. “The force which ever set in motion the great historical avalanches
of religious and political movements is the magic power of the spoken
word. The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the
appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.”^ The employment of verbal
violence, the repetition of such words as “smash,” “force,” “ruthless,”
“hatred,” was deliberate. Hitler’s gestures and the emotional character
of his speaking, lashing himself up to a pitch of near-hysteria in which
he would scream and spit out his resentment, had the same effect on an
audience. Many descriptions have been given of the way m which he
succeeded in communicating passion to his listeners, so that men
groaned or hissed and women sobbed involuntarily, if only to relieve
the tension, caught up m the spell of powerful emotions of hatred and
exaltation, from which all restraint had been removed.

It was to be years yet before Hitler was able to achieve this effect on
the scale of the Berlin Sportpalast audiences of the 1930s, but he had
already begun to develop extraordinary gifts as a speaker. It was in
Munich that he learned to address mass audiences of several thousands.
In Mein Kampf he remarks that the orator’s relationship with his
audience is the secret of his art “He mil always follow the lead of the
great mass m such a way that from the living emotion of his hearers
the apt word which he needs will be suggested to him and m its turn
this Will go straight to the hearts of his hearers.”® A little later he speaks
or the difficulty of overcoming emotional resistance: this cannot be
done by argument, but only by an appeal to the “hidden forces” m
an audience, an appeal that the orator alone can make.

Propaganda was not confined to the spoken word There were the
posters, always in red, the revolutionary colour, chosen to provoke
the Left; the swastika and the flag, with its black swastika m a white
circle on a red background, a design to which Hitler devoted the utmost
care; the salute, the uniform and the hierarchy of ranks. Mass meetings
and demonstrations were another device which Hitler borrowed from
the Austrian Social Democrats. The essential purpose of such meetings
was to cieate a sense of power, of belonging to a movement whose
success was irresistible. Hitler here hit upon a psychological fact which

^ Mein KampJ, pages 317 and 100. ® Ibid., page 100.

® Ibid., page 391-2.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

was to prove of great importance in the history of the Nazi movement:
that violeiKe and terror have their own propaganda value, and that
the display of physical force attracts as many as it repels. “When our
political meetings first started,” Hitler wntes, “I made it a special point
to organize a suitable defence squad. . . . Some of them were comrades
who had seen active service with me; others were young Party members
who right from the start had been trained and brought up to realize
that only terror is capable of smashing terror.”^ Defence is an ambiguous
word to describe such activities, for, as Hitler adds, “the best means of
defence is attack, and the reputation of our hall-guard squads stamped
us as a political fighting force and not as a debating society.”^

From the first these men were used, not to protect the Nazis’ meetings,
but to provoke disturbance, if necessary by breaking up other parties’
meetings, and to beat-up political opponents as part of a deliberate
campaign of intimidation. On 4 January, 1921, Hitler told an audience
in the Kindi Keller: “The National Socialist Movement in Munich will
in future ruthlessly prevent-— if necessary by force— all meetings or
lectures that are likely to distract the minds of our fellow countrymen.”’*
In September of the same year Hitler personally led his followers in
storming the platform of a meeting addressed by Ballerstedt of the
federalist Bavarian League. When examined by the police commission
which enquired into the incident. Hitler rephed: “It’s all right We got
what we wanted. Ballerstedt did not speak.”^

Far from using violence in a furtive underhand way, Hitler gave it
the widest possible publicity. In this way people were forced to pay
attention to what he was doing and they were impressed even again«^t
their will. No government of any determination would have tolerated
such methods, but the Republican Government in Berlin had virtually
no authority in Bavaria, and the Bavarian State Government showed
remarkable complacence towards political terrorism, provided it was
directed against the Left.

The “strong-arm” squads were first formed in the summer of 1920,
under the command of an ex-convict and watchmaker, Emil Maurice,
but their definitive organization dates from 3 August, 1921, when a
so-called “Gymnastic and Sports Division” was set up inside the Party.
“It is intended,” said the Party proclamation, “to serve as a means for
bnnging our youthful members together in a powerful organization
for the purpose of utilizing their strength as an oifensive force at the

^ Mem Kampf, page 406 ^ Ibid , page 406.

®Heiden: History of National Socialism (London, 1934), page 31, quoting the
report m the V.B,

^ Ibid.

L.H — C

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

disposal of the movement.”^ The German. Government, under pressure
from the Allies, had ordered the dissolution of the Freikorps and De-
fence Leagues, and the Nazi Gymnastic and Sports Division was one
of many camouflages used by Roehm and his friends to keep together
the disbanded forces. After 5 October, it changed its name to Star-
mabieilmg (the S.A., or Storm Section of the Party) and was largely
composed of ex-Freikorps men, especially from the Ehrhardt Brigade
and the Organization Consul which had carried out Erzberger’s murder.
The first S.A. leader, Johann Ulrich Khntzsch, had been one of Ehr-
hardt’s lieutenants and was for a time in prison in connexion with the
Erzberger assassination.

In November, 1921, the S.A. went into action in the so-called Saal-
schlacht,^ a fierce fight with the Reds in a Nazi meeting at the Hof-
brfiuhaus, which was built up into a Party legend. Next year, in August,
S.A. formations paraded with swastika flags flying in a demonstration
of the Patriotic Associations on the Munich Komgsplatz, and a month
later eight “Hundreds” {Hundertschaften) were organized. The use
Hitler intended to make of the S.A. was shown in October, 1922, when
he took eight hundred of his stormtroopers to Coburg for a nationalist
demonstration, defied the police ban on marching through the town and
fought a pitched battle in the streets with the Socialists and Com-
munists. To have been at Coburg was a much-prized distinction in the
Nazi Party, and a special medal was later designed for those who had
taken part in Coburg Day.

By 1921 it was clear that the Party was developing rapidly away
from the original conceptions of Harrer and Drexler. Inevitably,
Hitler’s propaganda methods, his attempt to turn the Party into a mass
following for himself and to ride roughshod over the other members
of the committee, produced resentment. Harrer resigned from the
Party chairmanship in 1920, but this was not the end of the trouble.
In the early summer of 1921 Hitler spent some time in Berlin, where
he got into touch with certain of the nationalist groups in the north
and spoke at the National Club, While he was away from Munich
the other members of the Party committee, long since thrust into the
shade, revolted against Hitler’s dictatorship and tried to recapture the
direction of the Party. The occasion was a proposal to unite with certain
^ Heiden’ History of National Socialism, page 73. ^ Literally, “Hall Battle.”

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 19194924

other small groups, the most important of which was Brunner^s and
Streicher’s German Socialist Party. The merger, it was hoped, would
fetter Hitler’s freedom of action.

Hitler returned immediately to Munich, and countered the move by
offering his own resignation. This put the rest of the committee in an
awkward position, for there was no doubt who had brought the Party
so far, and who found the Party funds as well as the publicity. The last
thing they could afford was to let Hitler resign. Hitler, however, far from
making concessions, demanded dictatorial powers if he was to remain,
together with the retirement of the committee and a ban on Party nego-
tiations for six years. In a leaflet defending themselves, Drexler and the
rest of the committee wrote:

A lust for power and personal ambition have caused Herr Adolf Hitler to
return to his post after his six weeks’ absence in Berlin, the other purpose of
which has not yet been disclosed. He regards the time as ripe for bringing
dissension and schism into our ranks by means of shadowy people behind
him, and thus furthering the interests of the Jews and their friends. It grows
more and more clear that his purpose is simply to use the National Socialist
Party as a springboard for his own immoral purposes and to seize the
leadership in order to force the Party on to a different track at the psycho-
logical moment.^

But poor Anton Drexler and his friends were no match for Hitler.
Drexler was obliged to repudiate the leaflet after Hitler had brought
a libel suit, and at two extraordinary meetings on 26 July and 29 July,
1921, Hitler was not only made President, but the statutes were altered
to give him unlimited power. Drexler was kicked upstairs as Honorary
President.

The split between Hitler and the committee went deeper than personal
antipathy and mistrust. Drexler and Harrer had always thought of the
Party as a workers’ and lower-middle-class Party, radical and anti-
capitalist as well as nationalist. These ideas were expressed in the pro-
gramme, with its Twenty-five Points (drawn up by Drexler, Hitler and
Feder, and adopted m February, 1920), as well as in the name of the
German National Socialist Workers’ Party. The programme was
nationalist and anti-Semitic in character, but at the same time came
out strongly against Capitalism, the trusts, the big industrialists and
the big landowners. All unearned income was to be abolished (Point
11); all war profits to be confiscated (12); the State was to take over
ail trusts and share m the profits of large industries (13-14); the big
^ Quoted m K Heiden: History of National Socialism^ pages 44-5.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

department stores were to be communalized and rented to small trades-
people, while preference m all public supplies was to be given to the
small trader (16). With this went equally drastic proposals for agrarian
reform: the expropriation without compensation of land needed for
national purposes, the abolition of ground rents and the prohibiting
of land speculation (17).

There is no doubt that on DrexleTs and Feder’s part this represented
a genuine programme to which they always adhered. Hitler saw it in
a different light. Although for immediate tactical reasons in 1926 he
was forced to declare the Party programme unalterable, all programmes
to Hitler were means to an end, to be taken up or dropped as they
were needed. ‘‘Any idea,” he says m Mein Kampf, “may be a source of
danger if it be looked upon as an end m itself.”^ Hitler’s own programme
was much simpler : power, power for himself, for the Party and the nation
with which he identified himself. In 1920 the Twenty-five Points were
useful, because they brought support; as soon as the Party had passed
that stage, however, they became an embarrassment. Hitler was as
much interested in the working class and the lower middle class as
Drexler, but he had no more sympathy for them than he had had in
Vienna* he was interested in them as material for political manipula-
tion. Their grievances and discontents were the raw stuff of politics,
a means, but never an end. Hitler had agreed to the Socialist clauses
of the programme, because in 1920 the German working class and the
lower middle classes were saturated in a radical anti-capitalism; such
phrases were essential for any politician who wanted to attract their
aipport. But they remained phrases. What Hitler himself meant by
Socialism can be illustrated by a speech he made on 28 My, 1922.
“Whoever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an
extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of his nation;
whoever has understood our great national anthem, Deutschland^
Deutschland uber alles, to mean that nothing in the wide world sur-
passes m his eyes this Germany, people and land, land and people —
that man is a Socialist.”^

The situation repeated itself in 1930 when Otto Strasser and his
friends left the Party, complaining bitterly that they had been deceived
in their belief that it was a radical and socialist movement.

For the same reasons Hitler was not prepared to limit membership
of the Party to any one class. All forms of discontent were grist to his
mill; there was as much room m his Party for the unemployed ex-oiSicer

^ Mein Kampf, page 184

2 Adolf Hitlers Reden (Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich, 1934), page 32.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

like Goering and Hess, or the embittered intellectual like Rosenberg
and Goebbeis, as for the working man who refused to join a trade iimon
or the small shopkeeper who wanted to smash the windows of the big
Jewish department stores. Ambition, resentment, envy, avidity for
power and wealth — in every class — ^these were the powerful motive
forces Hitler sought to harness. He was prepared to be all things to all
men, because to him all men represented only one thing, a means to
power. The character of the following Hitler was beginning to collect
in Munich, no less than the methods by which he attracted it, shocked
the prim, old-fashioned prejudices of Drexler and his friends, but they
had no weapons with which to fight against his combination of energy
and unscrupulousness, backed by the argument of success. On his side
Hitler did not conceal his contempt for those he described in Mein
Kampf as ‘‘antiquated theorists whose practical success is in inverse
proportion to their wisdom,”^

The committee which had hitherto controlled the Party was now
swept away — Hitler had long since ceased to attend its meetings. The
new president put in Max Amann, the ex-sergeant-major of the List
Regiment, to run the business side of the Party, and Dietrich Eckart as
editor of the Volkischer Beobachter, The power of making all big deci-
sions he kept m his own hands. The dismal back room at the Star-
neckerbrdu which had served as a committee-room was abandoned for
new and larger offices at 12, Cornehusstrasse. Bit by bit they accumu-
lated office furniture, files, a typewriter and a telephone. By February,
1923, they were able to bring out the Volkischer Beobachter as a daily,
with editorial offices at 39, Schellingstrasse.

Hitler worked in these early years in Munich as he had never worked
before; it was only sheer hard work that could create the illusion of
success. But it was work which suited Mm: Ms hours were irregular,
he was his own master, his life was spent in talking, he lived in a whirl
of self-dramatization, and the gap between his private dream-world
and his outer life had been narrowed, however slightly.

Until the end of his life Hitler continued to look back and recall
these early years of the Nazi movement with pride as the heroic period
of the Party’s struggle, the Kampfzeit, In January, 1932, he said:

I cast my eyes back to the time when with six other unknown men I founded
this association, when I spoke before eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
twenty, thirty, fifty persons. When I recall how after a year I had won
sixty-four members for the movement, I must confess that that which has
^ Mem Kampf ^ page 301.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

today tem created, when a stream of millions is flow mu into our movement,
represents something unique m German histOi>. The bouigcois parties
have had seventy years to work in. Where is the organization which m
seventy years has achieved what we have achieved in barely twelve?^

This was the “miracle” of National Socialism. “And it is truly a
miracle to trace this development of our mo\ement. To posterity it
will appear like a fairy-tale. A people is shattered and then a small
company of men arises and begins an Odyssey of wanderings, which
begins in fanaticism, which in fanaticism pursues its course.'’^

Who were the men with whom Hitler began his “Odyssey” in
Munich? One of the most important w’as Ernst Rochm, a man for
whom soldiering was his whole life and who had little but contempt for
anything outside it. “From my childhood 1 had only one thought and
wish — ^to be a soldier.” These are the opening words of his Memoirs.
Roehm was too independent and had too much the unruly temper of a
soldier of fortune to fit easily into the rigid pattern of the Reichswehr;
he had finally to resign his commission in 1923. None the less he pro-
vided an invaluable link with the Army authorities, e\en after his resig-
nation, and more than any other man it was he who created the S.A.

Two other ex-officers may be mentioned with Roehm. Rudolf Hess,
the son of a German merchant, who had been born in Alexandria,
was seven years younger than Hitler. He had served for part of the war
in the same regiment as Hitler before becoming a pilot in the Air Force,
Now a student at the University of Munich, he won a prize for an essay
on the theme: “How Must the Man be Constituted who will Lead
Germany back to Her Old Heights?” Hess, a solemn and stupid young
man who took politics with great seriousness, conceived a deep admira-
tion for Hitler and became his secretary and devoted follower. It was
through Hess that Hitler came into touch with the geopolitical theories
of Karl Haushofer, a former general who had become a professor at
Munich University.

A very different figure from the humourless Hess was Hermann
Goering, the last commander of the crack Richthofen Fighter Squadron
and holder of Germany’s highest decoration for bravery under fire,
the Pour le Merite. Four years younger than Hitler, he had come to
Munich in 1921 with no very clear purpose, but nominally to study at
the University. In the autumn of 1922 he too heard Hitler speak, was
attracted to the movement, and shortly afterwards took Klmtzsch’s
place as commander of the S.A.

^ Speech at the Industrie Klub^ Diisseldorf, 27 January, 1932: Baynes: voL I,
page 824.

^ Hitler at Mumch, 8 November, 1935. Ibid , page 138.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 19i9“1924

Like Roehm, Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart had joined the
German Workers’ Party before Hitler. Both were men of some education
and well known in Munich. Feder was a civil engineer by profession,
with unorthodox ideas about economics and the abolition of “interest
slavery” which he preached with the persistence of a crank. Feder made
a great impression on Hitler, who writes m admiration of him m Mein
Kampf^; he lost influence, however, and after the Nazi’s rise to power
remained in obscurity m Munich. Dietrich Eckart was considerably
older than Hitler, a not very successful journalist, poet and playwright,
a Bavarian character, fond of beer, food and talk, a great habitu^ of
such places as the Brennessel wine-cellar in Schwabing. Eckart was a
friend of Roehm, with violent nationalist, anti-democratic and anti-
clerical opinions, a racist with an enthusiasm for Nordic folk-lore and
a taste for Jew-baiting. At the end of the war he owned a scurrilous
little sheet called Auf guf Deutsch and became the editor of the Vblki-
scher Beobachter, Eckart was a man who had read widely — he had
translated “Peer Gynt” into German and had a passion for Schopen-
hauer. He talked well even when he was fuddled with beer, and un-
doubtedly had a big influence on the younger and still very raw Hitler.
He lent him books, corrected his style of expression in speaking and
writing, and took him around with him. It was Eckart who first intro-
duced Hitler to Berchtesgaden, where they used sometimes to go to
stay at the Platterhof on the Obersalzberg. Eckart had a wide circle of
friends and acquaintances, amongst them the wealthy piano manu-
facturers, the Bechsteiiis. Frau Helene Bechstein took a great liking to
Hitler, and he stayed with her when he visited Berlin in the summer
of 1921 . Frau Bechstein gave parties for people to meet the new prophet,
found money for the Party and later visited him in prison. It was through
Eckart again, who was a member of the Thule Society — ostensibly
interested in Nordic mythology but meddling also in political conspiracy
— that Hitler met Hess and Rosenberg.

Alfred Rosenberg was a refugee of German descent from the Baltic
town of Reval. He had been trained as an architect in Moscow, but
had fled to escape the Revolution, Through Rosenberg, who succeeded
Eckart as the editor of the Volkischer Beobachter in 1923, Hitler came
into touch with a group of passionately anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic
Russian emigres, the most important of whom was General Skoro-
padski, the German-appointed Governor of the Ukraine in 1918.
Skoropadski, his so-caUed “Press-agent,” Dr. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko,

^ Hitler is also said to have clipped his long straggling moustache to the famous
toothbrush in imitation of Feder.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

and others of the group used the Volkischer Beobachter for their White
Russian propaganda. General Biskupski is said to have been one of the
paper’s principal financial supporters. Another of this group, Scheubner-
Richter, a German from East Prussia, who had acted as a wartime
Russian agent in Constantinople before coming over to the Germans,
was one of Hitler’s intimates and was shot at his side in the un-
successful Munich putsch of November, 1923.

Rosenberg and Eckart probably had the greatest influence on Hitler
m his early years. The fact that Rosenberg had been trained as an archi-
tect impressed the man who had failed to get into the Vienna Academy,
while Ms pedantic and laborious discussion of questions of race and
culture (later published in Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts) led Hitler
to see in him the heir to the mantle of Houston Stewart Chamberlain
and the great prophet of the new racist Weltanschauung.^ In the summer
of 1923, Hitler visited Hans WaJmfned, the home of the Wagner family
in Bayreuth. For Hitler this was holy ground. He impressed Winnifried
Wagner and captivated the aged Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who
had married one of Wagner’s daughters and who wrote to him after-
wards: “My faith in the Germans had never wavered for a moment,
but my hope, I must own, had sunk to a low ebb. At one stroke you
have transformed the state of my soul.”^

Friedeliiid Wagner, the musician’s granddaughter, remembers him
as a young man “in Bavarian leather breeches, short, thick woollen
socks, a red-blue-checked sMrt and a short blue jacket that bagged
about his unpadded skeleton. His sharp cheekbones stuck out over
h<;)llow, pasty cheeks, and above them was a pair of unnaturally bright-
blue eyes. There was a half-starved look about him, but something
else too, a sort of fanatical look.”^ Later, he was to become a frequent
visitor to Wahnfned.

Two years after the Volkischer Beobachter had been bought for him,
Hiller made it into a daily. This required money. Most of it was pro-
vided by Frau Gertrud von Seidlitz, a Baltic lady who had shares in
Finnish paper mills, while Putzi Hanfstaengl, a son of the rich Munich
family of art publishers, advanced a loan of a thousand dollars. Hanf-
staengi, who had been educated at Harvard, not only took Hitler into
his own home — where he delighted Mm by his piano-piaymg, especially

^ The tragedy of Rosenberg, pathetically illustrated in the Memoirs he wrote in
Nuremberg Prison, was actually to have believed in the Nazi Weltanschauung
Hitler seems to have felt a certain contemptuous loyalty for him even later when he
was buffeted about helplessly m the struggle for power in the Party, and protected
him against the malice of his enemies

^ Quoted m Heiden: Der Fuehter, page 198.

® Friedelind Wagner: The Royal Family of Bayreuth (London, 1948), page 8.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

of Wagner — ^but introduced him to a number of other well-to-do
Munich families, including the Bruckmanns, another firm of Munich
publishers.

Like the Bechsteins, the Bruckmanns were charmed and made into
friends for life. But Hitler could be highly disconcerting in company.
Ill at ease on any formal social occasion, he cleverly exploited his own
awkwardness. He dehberately behaved in an exaggerated and eccentric
fashion, arriving late and leaving unexpectedly, either sitting m osten-
tatious silence or forcing everyone to listen to him by shouting and
making a speech. A description of him by a fellow guest at a party in
1923 is quoted by Konrad Heiden:

Hitler had sent word to his hostess that he had to attend an important
meeting and would not arrive until late: I think it was about eleven o’clock.
He came, none the less, m a very decent blue suit and with an extravagantly
large bouquet of roses, which he presented to his hostess as he kissed her
hand. While he was being introduced, he wore the expression of a public
prosecutor at an execution, I remember being struck by his voice when he
thanked the lady of the house for tea or cakes, of which, incidentally, he ate
an amazing quantity. It was a remarkably emotional voice, and yet it made
no impression of conviviality or intimacy but rather of harshness. However,
he said hardly anything but sat there in silence for about an hour; apparently
he was tired. Not until the hostess was so incautious as to let fall a remark
about the Jews, whom she defended in a jesting tone, did he begm to speak
and then he spoke without ceasing. After a while he thrust back his chair
and stood up, still speaking, or rather yelling, in such a powerful penetrating
voice as I have never heard from anyone else. In the next room a child woke
up and began to cry. After he had for more than half an hour deliverej;! a
quite Witty but very one-sided oration on the Jews, he suddenly broke off,
went up to his hostess, begged to be excused and kissed her hand as he took
his leave. The rest of the company, who apparently had not pleased him,
were only vouchsafed a curt bow from the doorway.^

As Heiden remarks, no one who was at that party ever forgot Adolf
Hitler.

There were other less reputable or less presentable companions:
Heinrich Hoffmann, who was to become the one man allowed to photo-
graph Hitler; Max Amann, Hitler’s tough, rude, but reliable business
manager and publisher; Christian Weber, a former horse-trader, of
great physical strength, who had worked as a ‘‘chucker-out” at “Do-
nisi’s,” a disreputable Munich dive, and whose social life consisted in
drinking endless seidels of beer; Ulrich Graf, Hitler’s personal body-
guard, a butcher’s apprentice and amateur wrestler, with a great taste
^ Heiden* Hitler^ a Biography (London, 1936), pages 102-3

L.H. — C"**

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

for brawling. Roelim’s own reputation — his homosexuality was later
to become notorious — was none too good; nor was that of Herman
Esser, the only speaker in those early days who for a time livalled Hiller.
Esser was a young man to whom Hitler openly referred as a scoundrel
He boasted of sponging on his numerous mistresses and made a
speciality of digging up Jewish scandals, the full stories of which in all
their scabrous details were published m the Volkischer Beobachter.
Esser’s only competitor was Julius Streicher, an elementary-school
teacher in Nuremberg, who excelled in a violent and crude anti-Semit-
ism, In 1923 Streicher founded Der Sturmer (The Stormtrooper), m
which he published fantastic accounts of Jewish ritual murders, of the
Jewish world conspiracy revealed in the so-called “Protocols of the
Elders of Zion,” and of Jewish sexual crimes. Hitler’s success in per-
suading Streicher to break away from the German Socialist Party
and join the Nazis with his Nuremberg following was a minor triumph,
and in Mein Kampf he goes out of his way to express his gratitude to
Streicher. These were the men with whom the “miracle” of National
Socialism was accomplished.

How Hitler managed to make a living at this time is far from clear.
In the leaflet which was drawn up by the dissident members of the
Committee in July, 1921, this was one of the principal points of accusa-
tion against Hitler: “If any member asks him how he lives and what
was his former profession, he always becomes angry and excited. Up to
now no answer has been supplied to these questions. So his conscience
caijnot be clear, especially as his excessive intercourse with ladies, to
whom he often describes himself as the King of Munich, costs a great
deal of money ”

During the libel action to which this led. Hitler was asked to tell the
court exactly how he lived. Did he, for instance, receive money for his
speeches? “If I speak for the National Socialist Party,” Hitler replied,
“I take no money for myself But I also speak for other organizations,
such as the German National Defence and Offensive League, and then,
of course, I accept a fee. I also have my midday meal with various Party
comrades in turn. I am further assisted to a modest extent by a few
Party comrades.”^ Hitler was obviously embarrassed by these enquiries,
for Hess was put up to write an open letter to the Volkischer Beobachter
assuring its readers that the leader, on this side too, was beyond
reproach.

The probable answer is that Hitler was as careless about money as
^ Heiden* Hitler, pages 96-7.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 19i9-'1924

he had been m Vienna, that he lived from hand to mouth and bothered
very little about who was going to pay for the next meal. Up to 1929
he continued to occupy one or two rooms m a poorish street near the
River Isar (No. 41 Thierschstrasse). He habitually wore an old and
dirty trench-coat, or a cheap raincoat, and troubled little about his
personal appearance or comforts. There was more than a touch of
Austrian Schlamperei about Hitler; in matters of everyday life he was
incapable of orderly routine or discipline, able to screw himself up to
remarkable exertions, and then as suddenly relapsing into lethargy
and a moody indifference.

To begin with, the Party, too, was run in the same casual way. Up
to a point this was due to lack of funds and the consequent need to
depend upon part-time help. Kurt Ludecke, one of the early Nazis,
says m his memoirs :

The oiganization lived from day to day financuiily, with no treasury to draw
on for lecture-hall rents, printing costs, or the thousand-and-one expenses
which ihicatencd to swamp us. The only funds we could count on wcie
membership dues, which were small, merely a drop in the bucket. Collec-
tions at mass meetings were sometimes large, but not to be relied on. Once
in a while a Nazi sympathizer would make a special contribution, and m a
few cases these gifts were really substantial. But wc never had money enough.
Everything demanded outlays that were, compared to our exchequer,
colossal. Many a time, posting the placards for some world-shattering
meeting, we lacked money to pay for the poster.^

Undoubtedly Hitler received contributions from those who sym-
pathized with the aims of his Party, but their amount and importance
have been exaggerated. Hermann Aust, a Munich industrialist who gave
evidence at the Court of Enquiry held after the putsch of November,
1923, told the judge that he had introduced Hitler to a number of
Bavarian business men and industrialists who had asked Hitler to speak
to meetings m the Herrenkhh and in the Merchants Hall at Munich.
As a result several of those present gave Aust donations for the move-
ment, which he passed on to Hitler, Amongst others who are mentioned
as subscribers are the Bechsiems, von Borsig, the big locomotive manu-
facturer (whom Hitler met at the National Club in Berlin), and Grandel,
a factory owner in Augsburg. In 1923 , when Hitler and Ludendorff
were working together, Fritz Thyssen, the chairman of the big United
Steelworks {Veremigte Stahiwerke), gave them a hundred thousand
gold marks, but such gifts were very rare in these early days.

There was a persistent rumour at the time, spread by their opponents,

^ Kurt Ludecke: I Knew Hitler (London, 1938), page 78.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

that the Nazis were financed by the French, but no concrete evidence
has been produced to support this charge. As Hitler was passionately
opposed to the particularist movement which the French wanted to
encourage in order to weaken Germany, it seems unlikely that they
would ever have considered supporting him, although it is possible that
some of the funds which the French are said to have made available to
other Bavarian parties may have found their way indirectly into Nazi
hands. Some money certainly reached Hitler from abroad and proved
of great value when the inflation pushed the exchange rate to fantastic
heights. Hanfstaengl’s loan of a thousand dollars represented a princely
sum. In 1924 Kurt Ludecke tried to raise money from Henry Ford,
but without success. Not until considerably later did Hitler succeed
m toucliing the big political funds of the German industrialists in the
Ruhr and the Rhineland: in fact, the Nazi Party was launched on very
slender resources.

The situation in Germany failed to improve with the passage of time.
Four years after the end of the war Germany was still a sick, distracted
and divided nation. A considerable section of the community was
irreconcilable in its attitude to the Republican Government and re-
pudiated the idea of loyalty to the existing regime. Only eighteen months
after the estabhshment of the Republic, the parties which suppoited
it lost heavily in the elections of June, 1920, to the extremists of both
Right and Left. The Social Democrats and the Democrats lost half
the votes they had polled in January, 1919, and saw the parties to the
left and right of them increase their support in the same degree. Even
more serious was the undisguised partiality shown by the Law Courts,
by many officials and by the Army when it was a question of intimida-
tion, or even murder, practised by the extremists of the Right and
directed against the Republic.

In 1921, following the murder of Erzberger on 26 August, the Wirth
Government tried to assert its authority. The Kahr Mimstry in Bavaria
was obliged to give way over the dissolution of the Einwohnerwehr^
and the para-mihtary organizations, and eventually yielded its place
to a ministry formed by Count Lerchenfeld, a man of moderate views
who tried to support the government in Berlin. This was in September,
1921. The new Bavarian Government forced Hitler to serve at least one

^ The so-called “Citizens* Defence’* which Roehm bad helped to organize and arm.
76

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

of the three months’ imprisonment to which he had been sentenced for
breaking up Ballerstedt’s meeting (24 June-27 July, 1922), and showed
Itself much less friendly to the extremists than its predecessor had been.

But events were on the side of the extremists. In April, 1921, the
Allies had fixed the figure for reparations to be paid by Germany at
132 thousand million gold marks, or £6,600 million, while in October
the League of Nations had overridden the recent plebiscite held in
Upper Silesia in order to give the Poles a larger and more valuable
share of former German territory. The policy of fulfilling the terms of
the Peace Treaty advocated by Wirth and Rathenau found little support
in the face of such bleak facts. In June, 1922, an attempt was made on
the life of Sciieidemann, the man who had proclaimed the Republic,
and on 24 June Walther Rathenau, Chancellor Wirth’s right-hand
man and Foreign Minister, was shot dead in the street. Meanwhile a
new and ominous development became more prominent, the fall in
the value of the German mark. The mark, which at the end of 1918,
had stood at the rate of four to the dollar, had dropped to seventy-five
by the summer of 1921. In the summer of 1922 the dollar was worth
four hundred marks, by the beginning of 1923 more than seven thou-
sand. The inflation was under way, a further factor undermining sta-
bility and adding to the difficulties of the Government, which was forced
to ask the Allies for a moratorium on reparation payments.

After the assassination of Rathenau the Wirth Government passed
a special Law for the Protection of the Republic prescribing heavy
penalties for terrorism. There was a loud outcry from the Right in
Bavaria, and the Lerchenfeld Government was put under strong pres-
sure to issue an emergency decree virtually suspending the operation
of the new law in Bavaria. This was more than the Reich Government
could tolerate, and Lerchenfeld was forced to promise the withdrawal
of his decree. Thereupon a new agitation broke out in Bavaria, while
Roehm, Poehner and Dr. Pittinger, head of the Bund Bayern md Reich,
the biggest of the anti-repubhcan leagues, planned a coup d'etat to over-
throw the governments in Munich and Berlin, in which Hitler’s National
Socialists were to march with the rest and to which the Bavarian District
Command of the Reichswehr was to give its support.

These plans came to nothing, but the Right-wing parties in Bavaria
were unappeased, and on 8 November, 1922, Lerchenfeld was obliged
to resign in favour of a new Bavarian Minister-President, Eugen von
Knilling. Giirtner, a man notorious for his nationalist sympathies,
was made Bavarian Minister of Justice, and on 16 November the Bava-
rian Right-wing organizations united their forces in the Vereinigte

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Vaterlaendische Verbaende, the Union of Patriotic Societies. At the same
time the extremists of the Nationalist Party m the north broke away
to form a new German Racial Freedom Party (Deulschvoelkische
Freiheitspartei), Ludendorff, a rabid nationalist who had been the
military dictator of wartime Germany, and who now lived at Lud-
wigshdhe in Bavaria, provided a link between the Freiheitspartei and
the anti-republican forces of the south. The success of Mussolini’s
March on Rome in October, 1922, offered an example and a happy
augury for the success of a similar attempt in Germany.

Hitler had taken an active part m the agitation against the Law for
Protection of the Republic. Nazi Party formations, including the S.A.,
had paraded on the Konigsplatz on 11 August, 1922, in a big mass
demonstration organized by the Patriotic Association, at which Hiller
himself had been the chief speaker. He had been ready to march in
the abortive putsch which Pittmger was to have organized, and the
National Socialists had agreed to join the Union of Patriotic Societies
founded in November.

At this point, however, a conflict began to develop between Hitler
and the Bavarian authorities which supplies the key to the contused
events of the twelve months that follow between November, 1922, and
November, 1923. Three issues were involved. The first was the extent
to which the quarrel between Bavaria and the Reich Government m
Berlin should be pursued. The second was the political use to be made
of this quarrel, whether to secure increased autonomy for Bavaria and
the restoration of the Bavarian monarchy, even perhaps — as the extreme
particulansts hoped — separation from North Germany and union with
Austria in a Catholic South German State; or, as Hitler demanded, to
overthrow the Republican Government in Berlin and establish a
nationalist regime in its place without impairing the unity and cen-
tralization of power in the Reich. The third was the part to be played
by Hitler and the National Socialists in these developments, whether
they were to continue in the role of useful auxiliaries for the Bavarian
Government and its supporters, the "‘respectable” Bavarian Peoples’
Party; or to take the lead in a revolutionary movement to sweep out
the “November Criminals” in Berlin, with Hitler as its political director
and pacemaker.

The issues were never stated as baldly and simply as this at the time,
for obvious reasons. On his side. Hitler had neither the following nor
the resources to act on his own. He could only influence events if he
could persuade the Bavarian State Government, the other nationalist
78

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

groups ill Bavaria and the Bavarian Command of the Army to go along
with him. However much he might rage against all these in private, he
was forced to be conciliatory and try to wm them over. On their side,
the Bavarian authorities, while often embarrassed and irritated by
Hitler, especially by his claim to be treated as an equal partner, recog-
nized his usefulness as an agitator, and were anxious to keep control
over the small but politically dangerous Nazi Party. The Bavarian
Government was m fact divided on the policy to be adopted towards
the Nazis. While the Minister of the Interior, Franz Schweyer, was
hostile and had already proposed Hitler’s deportation to Austria, the
new Minister-President, Kniliing, and the Minister of Justice, Giirtner,
saw in the Nazi movement a force to be put to good use, if it could
only be kept in hand. Moreover, the Bavarian authorities, by contrast
with Hitler, were themselves uncertain how far they wanted to push
their quarrel with Berlin and what was to be made of it, changing course
several times and frequently disagreeing among themselves. Indeed,
Plitler was one of the few men in Bavaria who saw clearly what he
wanted, but he lacked the power to impose his views on those in author-
ity, and so had either to dissemble and compromise, or run the risk
of outstripping his own strength.

The latent conflict between Hiller and the men who possessed the
power to put his plans into operation began to appear before the end
of 1922. On his release from prison at the end of July, Hitler became
more and more unrestrained in his speeches. On 18 September he told
the audience in the Zirkus Krone:

We want to call to account the November Criminals of 1918. It cannot be
that two million Germans should have fallen in vain and that afterwards
one should sit down as friends at the same table with tiaitors. No, we do not
pardon, we demand — vengeance! The dishonouring of the nation must
cease. For betrayers of the Fatherland and informers, the gallows is the
proper placc.^

in November he was saying.

The Marxists taught — If you will not be my brother, I will bash your skull in.
Our motto shall be — If you will not be a German, I will bash your skull m.
For we are convinced that we cannot succeed without a struggle. We have
to tight Vv'ith ideas, but, if necessary, also with our fists.^

This same month of November, Schweyer, the Minister of the Interior,
sent for Hitler and tvarned him against the consequences of the in-

^ Hitler at Munich, 18 September, 1922. Baynes: vol, I, page 107.

^Hiller at Munich m November, 1922, repotted m the V B. for 22 November;
Prange* page 122

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

iammatory propaganda he was conducting. In particular he sought to
dispel any illusion that the police would not fire if he attempted to
resort to force. When Hiller, in a state of excitement, shouted, ‘‘Herr
Minister, I give you my word of honour, never as long as I live will
I make a putsch,^" Schweyer replied: “All respect to your word of
honour, but if you go on making such speeches as you have been making,
the stream will one day burst loose of its own accord . . . and you will
swim with it.’’^ At the end of November Hitler’s most important link
with the Army, Roehm, was removed from his position as adjutant
to Major-General Epp, the commander of the infantry forces in Bavaria.
He was placed instead on the staff of the G.O.C. m Bavaria, General
von Lossow, who had been appointed by the High Command in Berlin
to restrain the Munich garrison from the sort of dangerous adventures
m which Roehm had been engaging.

In the months that followed neither the Bavarian Government
nor the Bavarian Command of the Army showed the least disposition
to let this young agitator, who sometimes behaved as if he were half
out of his mind, dictate the policy they were to pursue. Yet Hitler per-
sisted in courting one rebuff after another. Why was he so persistent?
Partly, no doubt, it was due to his innate ambition and arrogance;
partly to an overestimate of his own importance and misjudgment of
the political situation in Bavaria. But there was something else which
powerfully influenced him: the belief that the circumstances of 1923
presented an opportunity to overthrow the existing regime which might
not recur; the suspicion that unless they were hustled and pushed into
action the Bavarian authorities might let this opportunity slip, and the
fear all the time that the quarrel between Munich and Berlin might
be patched up and a deal concluded from which he would be excluded.
The mistakes Hitler made m 1923 sprang from the fretting impatience
of a man who saw his chance, but lacked the means to take it by himself,
and so fell into the trap of over-reachmg himself.

Nazism was a phenomenon which throve only in conditions of dis-
order and insecurity. While these had been endemic in Germany ever
since the defeat of 1918, two new factors made their appearance in
1923 which brought the most highly industriahzed country of con-
tinental Europe to the verge of economic and political disintegration:
the occupation of the Ruhr and the collapse of the mark.

By the autumn of 1922 the negotiations on reparation payments
between Germany and the allied Powers had reached a deadlock. In
^ Heiden : Det Fuehrer, page 1 29.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

view of the economic difficulties of the country, the German Govern-
ment professed itself unable to continue paying reparations and
requested a moratorium. The French Government of Poincare refused
to make any concession. Convinced that Germany could perfectly well
afford to pay, if she wanted to, Poincare used the technical excuse of a
German default in deliveries of timber to move French troops into the
industrial district of the Ruhr on 11 January, 1923. The occupation of the
Ruhr amounted to the application of economic sanctions against Ger-
many, and rapidly turned into a trial of strength between the two coun-
tries. The Ruhr was the industrial heart of Germany: after the loss of
Upper Silesia it accounted for eighty per cent of Germany’s steel and
pig-iron production and more than eighty per cent of her coal. To cut off
these resources from the rest of Germany, as the French proceeded to do,
was to bring the economic life of the whole country to a standstill
Such a prospect m no way deterred Poincare. By the rigorous applica-
tion of the letter of the Treaty of Versailles, he appeared to be aiming
at a substitute for that policy of breaking up the Reich which France
had failed to impose at the end of the war. The support which the
French gave to the highly suspect separatist movement for the
establishment of an independent Rhineland added colour to this
belief.

The result of the French occupation was to unite the German people
as they had never been united since the early days of the war. The Ger-
man Government called for a campaign of passive resistance, which
was waged with great bitterness on both sides, and soon extended to
the French and Belgian zones of occupation in the Rhineland. Before
long, passive resistance became a state of undeclared war in which the
weapons on one side were strikes, sabotage and guerilla warfare, and
on the other arrests, deportations and economic blockade.

The occupation of the Ruhr gave the final touch to the deterioration
of the mark. By 1 July, 1923, the rate of exchange with the dollar had
risen to a hundred and sixty thousand marks; by 1 August to a million;
by 1 November to a hundred and thirty thousand million. The collapse
of the currency not only meant the end of trade, bankrupt businesses,
food shortage in the big cities and unemployment: it had the effect,
which is the unique quality of economic catastrophe, of reaching down
to and touching every single member of the community in a way which
no political event can. The savings of the middle classes and working
classes were wiped out at a single blow with a ruthlessness which no
revolution could ever equal; at the same time the purchasing power of
wages was reduced to nothing. Even if a man worked till he dropped,

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

it was impossible to buy enough clothes for his family — and work,
in any case, was not to be found.

Whatever the cause of this phenomenon — and there were sections of
the community, among them the big industrialists and landowners, who
profited by it and sought to perpetuate its progress m their own inter-
ests — the result of the inflation was to undermine the foundations of
German society in a way which neither the war, nor the revolution of
November, 1918, nor the Treaty of Versailles had ever done. The real
revolution in Germany was the inflation, for it destroyed not only
property and money, but faith in property and the meaning of money.
The violence of Hitler’s denunciations of the corrupt, Jew-ridden system
which had allowed all this to happen, the bitterness of his attacks on the
Versailles settlement and on the Republican Government which had
accepted it, found an echo in the misery and despair of large classes of
the G^man nation.

Hitler saw the opportunity clearly enough, but it was more difficult to
see how to take advantage of it and turn the situation to his own profit.
Despite the growth of the Party and the S.A., it was still a provincial
South German movement, with neither support nor organization out-
side Bavaria. The National Sociahsts had not got the strength to
overthrow the Repubhc on their own. They could do that only if Hitler
succeeded in uniting all the nationalist and anti-republican groups m
Bavaria, and if he succeeded in securing the patronage of more powerful
forces — of which the most obvious was the Bavarian State Government
and the Bavarian District Command of the Army — for a march on
Berlin. Hitler devoted his energies throughout 1923 to achieving these
two objectives.

All the time, however, he was oppressed by anxiety lest events should
outstrip him. In the early months of 1923 he was afraid lest the French
occupation of the Ruhr might unite Germany behind the Government.
Hitler had no use for national unity if he was not m a position to exploit
it: the real enemy was not in the Ruhr, but m Berlin. In the Vdlldscher
Beobachter he wrote: “So long as a nation does not do away with the
assassins within its borders, no external successes can be possible. While
written and spoken protests are directed against France, the real deadly
enemy of the German people lurks within the walls of the nation. . . .
Down with the November criminals, with all their nonsense about a
United Front,”

With the tide of national feeling running high against the French, and
in support of the Government’s call for resistance, this was an unpopular

PREFACE

I BEGAN THIS BOOK with two questions in mind. The first, suggested
by much that was said at the Nuremberg Trials, was to discover how
great a part Hitler played in the history of the Third Reich and whether
Goering and the other defendants were exaggerating when they claimed
that under the Nazi rdgime the will of one man, and of one man alone,
was decisive. This led to the second and larger question: if the picture
of Hitler given at Nuremberg was substantially accurate, what were the
gifts Hitler possessed which enabled him first to secure and then to
maintain such power. I determined to reconstruct, so far as I v/as
able, the course of his life from his birth in 1889 to his death in 1945, in
the hope that this would enable me to offer an account of one of the
most puzzling and remarkable careers in modern history.

The book is cast, therefore, in the form of an historical narralive,
interrupted only at one point by a chapter in which I have tried to
present a portrait of Hitler on the eve of his greatest triumphs (Chapter
Seven). I have not attempted to write a history of Germany, nor a study
of government and society under the Nazi rdgime. My theme is not
dictatorship, but the dictator, the personal power of one man, although
it may be added that for most of the years between 1933 and 1945 this is
identical with the most important part of the history of the Third Reich.
Up to 1934 the interest lies in the means by which Hitler secured power
in Germany. After 1934 the emphasis shifts to foreign policy and
ultimately to war, the means by which Hitler sought to extend his power
outside Germany. If at times, especially between 1938 and 1945, the
figure of the man is submerged beneath the complicated narrative of
politics and war, this corresponds to Hitler’s own sacrifice of his private
life (which was meagre and uninteresting at the best of times) to the
demands of the position he had created for himself. In the last year of

PREFACE

Ills life, however, as his empire begins to crumble, the true nature of the
man is revealed again in all its naked ugliness.

In the normal course of events it is a long time before the historian
can secure access to the sort of evidence which chance has made avail-
able within a few years of the overthrow of the Third Reich. At the end
of the war the German State ceased to exist, and a great part of its
secret archives fell into the hands of the victorious Allies, a unique event
in the history of a Great Power. Moreover, the trial of the surviving
German leaders before the International Tribunal at Nuremberg
brought to light the most important items of evidence much more
quickly than could be expected from the systematic publication of the
archives which has now begun but must necessarily take time. Chance
has also favoured the historian in unexpected windfalls, such as the
discovery of the Ciano and Goebbels diaries, of the records of Ciano’s
diplomatic conferences, and of many of the letters exchanged between
Hitler and Mussolini.

The limitations of this material need to be borne in mmd. It is in-
complete and patchy. It throws a flood of light on two periods of
Hitler’s career, the years 1930-1934 and the years 1938-1945, but adds
much less to our knowledge of the earlier years or of the period 1934-
1938. It IS much fuller on foreign policy than on the internal organiza-
tion of the Nazi dictatorship, and it can be misleading unless due allow- ‘
ance is made for what is still missing. Thus the chance which has
preserved the records of Hitler’s naval conferences intact can produce
a distorted picture of Hitler’s strategy, unless careful attention is paid
to the records of his military conferences, which are unfortunately
fragmentary but appear to tell a very different story.

Despite these difficulties which are inherent in the historical study of
any period, it can be claimed that the material already available for the
study of this period in German history is richer than that which exists
for the history of any other Great Power in this period and possibly
a good deal earlier.

I have supplemented the records which have become available since
the end of the war by a careful re-reading of Mein Kampf, of Hitler’s
speeches, of much Nazi propaganda material and of evidence published
before 1945. The recent memoirs of such men as Dr. Schacht, General
Guderian, Dr. Schmidt and others have proved another valuable source
of information. Herr von Papen’s Memous appeared too late for me to
use, but I have taken account of the evidence which he gave at Nurem-
berg. I have derived much help from the work of those who have

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

line to take. To make people listen to him, Hitler summoned five
thousand of the S.A. Stormtroopers to Munich for a demonstration at
the end of January, 1923. The authorities promptly banned it. Hitler
went on his knees to Nortz, the new Police President who had replaced
the sympathetic Poehner, begging him to get the ban lifted. When Nortz
refused, Hitler began to rave: the S.A. would march even if the police
opened fire. The Bavarian Government retorted by issuing an additional
ban on twelve meetings which Hitler was to address after the demon-
stration. Hitler was getting above himself: it was time to take him
down a peg.

Even Roehm’s intervention with General von Lossow at first failed
to secure a reversal of this decision. Only when Lossow had satisfied him-
self that his officers could be relied on to fire on the National Socialists
if necessary — a significant change of attitude— were Roehm and Epp
able to secure his promise to inform the Government “that in the
interests of national defence, he would regret any vexation of the
national elements.” The ban was thereupon lifted and Hiller held his
demonstration.

In his speech at this first Party Day Hitler made no secret of his hope
that the Berlin Government would fail to unite the nation in resistance
to the French.

Whoever wants this fire [of enthusiasm for the glory of the Fatherland] to
consume every single German must realize that first of all the arch-enemies of
German freedom, namely, the betrayers of the German Fatherland, must be
done away with. . . . Down with the perpetrators of the November crime.'
And here the great mission of our movement begins. In all this prattle about
a “united front” and the like, we must not forget that between us and those
betrayers of the people [i.e., the Republican Government m Berlin] . . . there
are two million dead. . . . We must always remember that m any new
conflict in the field of foreign affairs the German Siegfried will again be
stabbed in the back.”®

Hitler was interested in the French occupation of the Ruhr only in so
far as this might produce a state of affairs in Germany which could be
used for the seizure of power. His purpose was revolutionary, and
nationalism a means to this end. He had no use for talk of a national
uprising and a new war of liberation which could only strengthen the
position of the Government and divert attention to the enemy without.
The time to deal with the French would come when the Republic had

' “November crime” and “November criminals” are expressions Hitler habitually
used to descnbe the foundation of the German Republic in November, 1918, and
the members of the Republican Government.

® Hitler’s speech at Munich, 25 January, 1923; Prange: page 221.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

been overthrown. Here Hitler’s essentially political outlook differed
sharply from that of the Army and ex-Freikorps officers like Roehm,
who thought of a war of revenge against France.^

This conflict had been present from the beginning in the very different
views Hitler and Roehm took of the S.A. Roehm was a soldier first and
last. For him, as for the other officers and ex-officers who helped to train
the S.A., the first object was to build up m secret the armed forces for-
bidden by the Treaty of Versailles. The Party’s stormtroop formations
were a means to this end, just as the Freikorps, the Defence Leagues and
the Einwohnetwehr had been used in their turn as camouflages for an
illegal reserve army ready to supplement the small regular Army which
was all that Germany was allowed under the Peace Treaty. With the out-
break of a state of undeclared war with France, the Army leaders
believed that this might well prove the prelude to a general war. In
order to strengthen the Army it was planned to draw on the para-
military formations like the S A. Everything was to be done to bring
them up to a high pitch of military efficiency, and Roehm flung himself
into the task of expanding and training the S.A. with such effect that by
the autumn of 1923 it numbered fifteen thousand men.

For Hitler, on the other hand, the Party, not the Army, came first, and
the end was political power. The S.A. was not just a disguised Army
reserve; these were to be political troops used for political purposes.
With shrewder insight than Roehm and his friends, Hitler saw that the
way to rebuild Germany’s national and mihtary power, and to reverse
the decision of the war, was not by playing at soldiers in the Bavarian
woods or even by fighting as guerillas against the French in the Ruhr.
This led nowhere, for the French, with their superior forces, were bound
to win. It was necessary to begin by capturing pohtical power in the
State, and the S.A. were to be used for that purpose. Once that had been
secured, the rest would follow — as it did after 1933.^

At one time it had looked as if the Army leaders might be prepared to
use their own forces for such a purpose, when the unsuccessful Kapp
putsch of 1920 was backed by part of the Army, under the leadership of
the Commander in North Germany, General von Luttwitz. If, however,

^ Hitler’s attitude was not unlike that of another revolutionary leader, Lemn, who
in 1918 had insisted on the Bolshevik Government accepting the humiliating terms
of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, thus placing the political task of carrying out the
revolution in Russia before that of driving out the German invader.

^ Cf. Mem Kampf, pages 447-8: “The S.A must not be either a military defence
organization or a secret society. ... Its training must not be organized from the
military standpoint, but from the standpoint of what is most practical for Party
purposes.”

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

the generals were not prepared to carry out a coup d'etat. Hitler feared
that too great dependence upon the Army might tie his hands.

Hitler’s dislike and opposition to the expansion of the S.A. under the
patronage of the Reichswehr was thus entirely logical, and when he set to
work to rebuild the Party after 1924 there was no point upon which he
laid greater stress in Mein Kampf than preventing the S.A. from again
becoming a defence association in disguise.^

In 1923, however, Hitler had to work with those who would work
with him. By the beginning of February, largely thanks to Roehm, an
alliance had been elfected between the Nazis and four other of the
Patriotic Leagues in Bavaria — the Reichsflagge (Reich Banner) of
Captain Heiss, and Lieutenant Hofmann’s Kampfverband Niederbayem
(Lower Bavarian Fighting League), both of which had been persuaded
to break away from the more cautious Pittinger and join Hitler; Zeller’s
Vaterlaendische Vereine Mihichen (Patriotic Leagues of Munich); and
Mulzer’s Bund Oberland (Oberland Defence League). A joint committee
was set up, and Lt.-Col. Kriebel appointed to act as military leader of
this Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Vaterlaendischen Kampfverbaende (Working
LFnion of the Patriotic Fighting Associations). This had only been
accomplished with the greatest diflSculty in face of the intrigues and
jealousies with which the nationalist organizations were riddled. For the
rest of 1923 Hitler and Roehm worked hard to bring in as many of the
other groups as they could, and to secure for Hitler a position as pohtical
leader on equal terms with Kriebel’s as mihtary leader.

The Bavarian Government, and even more the powerful Bavarian
Peoples’ Party, regarded these developments with suspicion and hostility.
Roehm’s memoirs,^ which are an important source for this period, are
full of bitter comments on what he regards as the cowardice and
treachery of the Bavarian Right and its representatives in the Govern-
ment. Hitler’s efforts to win over General von Lossow, the Army G.O.C.
in Bavaria, to the idea of launching a civil war and a march on Berlin,
were equally unsuccessful. During Apnl, 1923, he called on Lossow
almost daily, and the General admitted that he was not unimpressed by
Hitler’s eloquence. But neither Lossow nor the Bavarian Government
were prepared to risk taking action. This is the persistent theme of all
Hitler’s speeches at this time:

^ Cf. Mein Kampf, pages 439-53.

* Die Memoiren des Stabschef Roehm (Uranus Verlag, Saarbrucken, 1934).

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Until the present day the half-hearted and the lukewarm have remained the
curse of Germany. . . . For liberation something more is necessary than an
economic policy, something more than industry: if a people is to become free,
it needs pride and will-power, defiance, hate, hate and once again hate.^
We have the duty to speak, since in the near future, when we have gained
power, we shall have the further duty of taking these creators of rum (the
November criminals), these clouts, these traitors to their State, and of hang-
ing them to the gallows to which they belong. Let no one think that in them
there has come a change of heart.*

Hitler’s hatred was still directed, not against the French, but against
the Republic, which he depicted as a corrupt racket run by the Jews at
the expense of the national interests. No accusation against the Jews was
too wild for him, but his most bitter scorn was reserved for the “respect-
able” parties of the Right who hesitated to act.

You must say farewell to the hope that you can expect action from the
parties of the Right on behalf of the freedom of the German people. The
most elementary factor is lacking: the will, the courage, the determination.*
We are now met by the question: Do we wish to restore Germany to free-
dom and power? If “yes,” then the first thing to do is to rescue it from the
Jew who IS ruining our country. ... We want to stir up a storm. Men must
not sleep: they ought to know that a thunderstorm is coming up. We want
to prevent our Germany from suffering, as Another did, the death upon the
Cross.*

But Hitler’s speeches were not even reported m the Press.

-At the end of April, in an attempt to attract attention, the Nazis and
their allies decided to break up the traditional socialist and trade-union
demonstrations in Munich on May Day, unless the Bavarian Govern-
ment acceded to their demand and banned them. This decision was
taken at a meeting on 30 April, the minutes of which were later dis-
covered by a Committee of Investigation of the Bavarian Diet.^

After the meeting Hitler went to see General von Lossow: he had a
cold reception. When he demanded the arms which were stored in the
barracks, on the pretext of a Communist Putsch, Lossow refused and
added that the Army would fire on anyone creating disorder in the

* Hitler in Munich, 10 April, 1923, Baynes, vol. I, pages 43-4.

* Hitler in Munich, 13 April, 1923, Baynes vol. I, page 53

* Hitler in Munich, 24 April, 1923, Baynes vol. I, pages 61-2.

* Hitler in Munich, 20 April, 1923, Baynes vol I, page 60.

* Hitler and Kahr—a report on the findings of the Committee of Investigation of
the Bavarian Diet, published by the Bavarian Social Democratic Party in Munich,
1928. The report was written by Dr. Wilhelm Hoegner, who acted as assistant
reporter of the committee.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

streets, regardless of what Party he belonged to. Colonel Seisser, the
commander of the State police, gave the same answer.

Hiller had now placed himself in a diflScult position. Emergency
orders had gone out to the S.A. and other formations, and men were
moving into Munich from as far away as Landshut and Nuremberg in
the expectation that at last they were going to start the long-awaited
putsch. It was too late to go back without loss of face. The only thing to
do was to go on. The S.A. had considerable quantities of arms — the
Landshut detachment led by Gregor Strasser and Himmler brought a
hundred and forty rifles and a number of light machine-guns with them
— and at the last moment Roehm drove up to the barracks with an
escort of Stormtroopers in trucks, bluffed his way in and took what
he wanted.

But this time Hitler and Roehm had gone too far. On the morning of
1 May, while the Socialists marched peacefully through the streets of
Munich, some twenty thousand Stormtroopers gathered on the Ober-
wiesenfeld, the big parade-ground on the outskirts of the city, waiting
for orders. Hitler, wearing a steel helmet and his Iron Cross, was accom-
panied by Goering, the commander of the S A., the two leaders of the
Bund Oberland and the Reichsflagge, the veterinary Dr. Friedrich Weber
and Captain Heiss, Hess, Streicher, Frick, Gregor Strasser, Himmler and
the notorious ex-Freikorps leader, Lieutenant Rossbach, at the head of
the Munich S.A. The military command was in the hands of Lieutenant-
Colonel Kriebel.

As the morning wore on. Hitler became more and more anxious: still
the agreed signal from Roehm did not come. Roehm in fact was standing
to attention before an angry General von Lossow and being reminded of
his duty as a soldier. When he reached the Oberwiesenfeld, a little before
noon, it was m the company of an armed detachment of troops and
police, who drew a cordon round the Stormtroopers. Roehm brought
the uncompromising message that the arms must be returned at once, or
Hitler must take the consequences. Against the advice of Gregor Strasser
and Kriebel, who wanted to use their superior numbers to overpower the
troops. Hitler capitulated. The arms were returned to the barracks the
same afternoon. Despite his attempt to explain away the “postpone-
ment” of any action, both in his speech on the Oberwiesenfeld, and again
that night in the Zirkus Krone, nothing could disguise the fact that
Hitler’s bluff had been called and that in front of thousands of his
followers he had had to accept the public humiliation of defeat. This
was the fruit, he must have reflected bitterly, of too great dependence
on the Army.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

For some time after 1 May Hitler dropped out of the political scene.
The early edition of his speeches does not mention a single occasion on
which he spoke between 4 May and 1 August: he spent a good deal of the
summer at Berchtesgaden and only occasionally visited Munich.^
Roehm, too, disappeared from Munich in May and did not return
until 19 September. None the less the fiasco of May Day had nothing
like the consequences that might have been expected. There were two
reasons for this: the equivocal attitude of the Bavarian authorities and
the mounting state of crisis in Germany.

Hitler’s actions on 30 Apnl and 1 May had laid him open to the
gravest charges under the law, yet nothing was said or done to limit his
freedom of action in the future. Proceedings were actually begun by the
State Prosecutor, but the investigation came to an abrupt end on 1
August, and the next entry in the prosecutor’s files, dated 22 May, 1924,
records that the case had been dropped. Hitler himself had written to the
State Prosecutor: “Since for weeks past I have been shamelessly abused
in the Press and in the Diet, without being able, by reason of the
consideration I owe the Fatherland, to defend myself in public, I am
thankful to Fate that it now allows me to conduct my defence before a
Court of Justice, where I can speak out openly.’’^

The hint was taken, and Franz Giirtner, the Bavarian Minister of
Justice, intervened to prevent the process of the law continuing. When
Roehm was informed that he would be transferred to Bayreuth after the
part he had played, he resigned his commission and wrote a letter of
complaint against Lossow to the commander of the Munich garrison,
Qeneral von Danner. Once again matters were patched up. Roehm
withdrew his resignation, and Lossow secured the withdrawal of
Roehm’s dismissal which had been telegraphed from Berlin. Instead,
Roehm went on sick leave and retained his position on Lossow’s staff.

This compliant attitude on the part of the Bavanan Government and
the Army suggested that the worst crimes of which Hitler and Roehm
had been guilty were indiscretion and premature action, and that, in
more favourable circumstances, another attempt to force the hand of
the authorities might succeed. In August and September, 1923, the more
favourable circumstances appeared to be provided by the sharp deterior-
ation of the political and economic situation in Germany.

The French occupation of the Ruhr still continued, but the initial

' During August Hitler attended a meeting of the Inter-State Bureau of National
Socialist Parties, held at Salzburg. Hemsisted that Munich, not Vienna, must become
the centre of the movement, and the Bureau does not appear to have met again.
Cf Ludecke; chapter VIII.

* Olden page 130.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

mood of national unity on the German side had gone. The intensification
of the inflation, the desperate economic position of millions of Germans
and the growth of extremism both on the Right and on the Left, seemed
to have brought the country close to civil war. The Cuno Government in
Berlin fumbled with problems which threatened to overwhelm it, and
on 11 August the Social Democrats openly demanded the Govern-
ment’s resignation.

Stresemann, who took Cuno’s place as Chancellor, at first appeared
no more able than his predecessor to master the disintegration of the
economy and of the unity of the Reich. The value of the mark con-
tinued to fall. There were widespread strikes and riots under Com-
munist leadership in many working-class districts. Trains and trucks
were raided for food by the half-starving population of the cities. The
French maintained their support of the Rhenish Separatists, and talk of
a break with Berlin was rife in Bavaria as well as in the Rhineland.

Encouraged by the growing disorder and the increasingly strained
relations between Munich and Berlin, Hitler renewed his agitation in
August. The fact that Stresemann was known to be anxious to end the
exhausting campaign of passive resistance in the Ruhr and Rhineland
enabled Hitler to change front. He now adopted the more popular line
of attacking the Berlin Government for the betrayal of the national
resistance to the French, as well as for allowing the inflation to continue.

On 2 September, the anniversary of the German defeat of France at
Sedan in 1870, a huge demonstration, estimated by the police to have
involved a hundred thousand people, celebrated German Day at
Nuremberg amidst scenes of great enthusiasm. All the Patnotic Associ-
ations took part. During the parade Hitler stood at the side of Luden-
dorfl', and afterwards flayed the Government in a characteristically
violent speech.

Ludendorff’s presence was important. His reputation as the greatest
military figure of the war and an unremitting opponent of the Republic
made him the hero of the Right-wing extremists, while he still enjoyed
considerable prestige in the Army. There was no one better placed to
preside over a union of the quarrelsome and jealous patriotic leagues,
and Hitler had carefully maintained close relations with the old man for
some time past. Ludendorff was no political leader : in matters of politics
he was invincibly stupid as well as tactless. He disliked Bavarians, was on
the worst possible terms with Crown Prince Rupprecht, the Bavarian
Pretender, and constantly attacked the Church in the most Catholic
part of Germany. But at least he was reliable on the question of Bavarian

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

separatism, and his political stupidity was an asset from Hitler’s point
of view, for, skilfully managed, he could bring a great name to Hitler’s
support without entrenching on the control of policy which Hitler was
determined to keep in his own hands.

The demonstration at Nuremberg had immediate practical conse-
quences. The same day a new German Fighting Union {Deutscher
Kampfbwid) was set up and a manifesto issued over the old signatures of
Friedrich Weber {Bund Oberland), Heiss (Reicksflagge) and Adolf Hitler.
The object of this renewed alliance was declared to be the overthrow of
the November Republic and of the Diktat of Versailles.

The crisis came to a head and entered its final phase at the end of
September, 1923. On 26 September Stresemann announced the decision
of the Reich Government to call off the campaign of passive resistance
in the Ruhr unconditionally, and two days later the ban on reparation
dehveries to France and Belgium was hfted. This was a courageous and
wise decision, intended as the preliimnary to negotiations for a peaceful
settlement. But it was also the signal the Nationalists had been waiting
for to stir up a renewed agitation against the Government. “The
Republic, by God,’’ Hitler had declared on 12 September, “is worthy of

Its fathers The essential character of the November Republic is to be

seen in the comings and goings to London, to Spa, to Pans and to
Genoa. Subserviency towards the enemy, surrender of the human
dignity of the German, pacifist cowardice, tolerance of every indignity,
readipess to agree to everything until nothing remains.’’^

On 25 September the leaders of the Kamp/bund—HitltT, Goering,
Roehm, Kriebel, Heiss and Weber — had already met and discussed
what they were to do. For two and a half hours Hitler put his point of
view and asked for the political leadership of the alliance. So strong was
the impression he made that both Heiss and Weber agreed, while Roehm,
convinced that they were on the edge of big events, next day resigned his
commission and finally threw in his lot with Hitler.

Hitler’s first step was to put his own fifteen thousand S.A. men in a
state of readiness and announce fourteen immediate mass meetings in
Munich alone. Whether he intended to try a coup d’itat is not clear:
probably he looked to the mass meetings and the state of public opinion
they would reveal to make the decision for him. But the Bavarian
' Hitler in Munich, 12 Septonber, 1923. Baynes: vol. I, pages 80-1.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

Government was taking no chances. Knilling, the Minister President,
was thoroughly alarmed. On 26 September the Bavarian Cabinet pro-
claimed a state of emergency and appointed Gustav von Kahr, one of the
best-known Bavarian Right-wing politicians with strong monarchist and
particularist leanings, as State Commissioner with dictatorial powers
Kahr promptly used his powers to ban Hitler’s fourteen meetings and
refused to give way when Hitler, beside himself with rage, screamed
that he would answer him with bloody revolution.

In the confused events that followed 26 September and led up to the
unsuccessful putsch of 8-9 November, the position of two of the three
parties is tolerably clear. Hitler consistently demanded a revolutionary
course: a move on Berlin to be backed by the political and military
authorities in Bavaria, but aiming at the substitution of a new regime
for the whole of Germany. As he admitted later: “I can confess quite
calmly that from 1919 to 1923 I thought of nothing else than a coup
cVetat."'^ The twists and hesitations in Hitler’s conduct arose, not from
any doubts about his aim, but from recognition of the fact that he could
not carry such a plan through with his own resources, and must, some-
how or other, persuade Kahr, the State Commissioner, and Lossow, the
commanding officer in Bavaria, to join with him.

The attitude of the Central Government in Berlin was equally clearly
defined. It had to face the threat of civil war from several directions:
from Bavaria, where Hitler was openly calling for revolt, and where
Kahr, the State Commissioner, began to pursue an independent course
of action which ran counter to the policy of Berlin; from Saxony, where
the State Government came increasingly under the influence of the
Communists, who were also aiming at a seizure of power; from the
industrial centres, like Hamburg and the Ruhr, where Communist
influence was strong; from the Rhineland, where the Separatists were
still active, and from the nationalist extremists of the north, where the
para-military organization known as the Black Reichswehr, under the
leadership of Major Buchrucker, attempted to start a revolt at the
beginning of October.

The Stresemann Government’s chances of mastering this critical
situation depended upon the attitude of the Army. The High Command
could be relied upon to use force to suppress any attempt at revolution
from the Left, but its attitude towards a similar move from the Right
might well be uncertain. At the time of the Kapp Putsch m March, 1920,
part of the Army under General von Luttwitz had openly supported the
coup d’etat, while the Commander-in-Chief, General von Seeckt,
* Hitler at Munich, 9 November, 1936 Baynes: voL I, page 154.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

although disagreeing with Luttwitz, had declined to allow his troops to
be used to support the legal government. In the years since the war, the
protection of the Army had been invoked again and again by those like
Hitler who were patently disloyal to the Republic and scheming to
accomplish its overthrow.

Nothing could more clearly illustrate the unique position of the Array
in German politics, a position fully appreciated by Seeckt and the
Army High Command. Seeckt, one of the most remarkable men in the
long history of the German Army, was equal to the occasion. Ten years
later he wrote; “The error of all those who organize armies is to mistake
momentary for the permanent state.”^ In 1923 he had the insight to see
that it was in the long-term interests of Germany, and of the German
Army he served, to uphold the authority even of a Republican govern-
ment, and so to preserve the unity of the Reich, rather than allow the
country to be plunged into civil war for the momentary satisfaction of
Party rancour and class resentment. In the Order of the Day which he
issued on 4 November, 1923, Seeckt put his case in half a dozen
sentences:

... As long as I remain at my post, I shall not cease to repeat that salvation
for Germany cannot come from one extreme or the other, neither through
help from abroad nor through revolution, whether of the Right or of the
Left. It IS only by hard work, silently and persistently pursued, that we can
survive. This can only be accomplished on the basis of the legal constitution.
To abandon this principle is to unleash civil war. In such a civil war none of
the parties would succeed in winning; it would he a conflict which would end
only in their mutual destruction, a conflict similar to that of which the
thirty Years War provides so terrible an example.^

Seeckt’s attitude allowed the political and military authorities in
Berlin to speak with one voice, and on 26 September President Ebert
invoked Clause 48 of the Weimar Constitution to confer emergency
powers upon the Minister of Defence, Gessler, and the Commander-in-
Chief, Seeckt. Until February, 1924, when the state of emergency was
brought to an end, this meant that the Army assumed the executive
functions of the government and undertook the responsibility of safe-
guarding both the security of the Reich and the inviolability of the
Republican Constitution. An attempt by Hitler — or anyone else — to
carry out a march on Berlin would be met by force, with the Army on the
side of the Government.

But there was a third party to be taken into account, the civil and

General Hans von Seeckt- Die Reichswehr (Berlin, 1933), page 31.

“ General von Rabenau; Seeckt, Aus SememLeben, vol. II, 1918-36 (Leipzig, 1940),
page 371; and Benoist-Mechm: Histoire de L'Armee Allemande, vol. II, page 288.

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

military authority in Bavaria represented by Kahr and Lossow. It was
the existence of this third factor, and the uncertainty of the pohcy Kahr
and Lossow would adopt, which gave Hitler a chance of success and
confuses the development of events for the historian.

Although the Bavarian Government had refused to allow the Nazis a
free hand in May, and had now appointed Kahr to keep Hitler in check,
relations between Munich and Berlin were strained. It was the action of
the Bavarian Government in conferring dictatorial powers on Kahr
which had led the Reich Government to declare a state of emergency
Itself, and Kahr’s intentions were regarded with suspicion in Berlin.

Kahr’s aims are still far from clear: probably they were never entirely
clear to him at the time. Kahr, however, was a Bavarian and a monarch-
ist; he was attracted by the idea of overthrowing the Republican regime
m Berlin and putting in a conservative government which would give
Bavaria back her old monarchy and a more autonomous position under
a new constitution. At other times he played with the possibility of
breaking away from the Reich altogether and establishing an indepen-
dent South German State under a restored Bavarian monarchy. Such
ideas were anathema to Hitler. Point I of the Nazi Party’s Programme
demanded the union of all Germans (including those of Austria as well as
Bavaria) in a single German State, while the final point (XXV) contained
an equally clear demand for “the creation of a strong central authority
in the State.” Hitler himself had persistently campaigned against the
particularist sympathies of the various Bavarian parties. None the
less he saw that he could use an open quarrel between Munich and
Berlin for his own purpose. If Kahr could only be persuaded to help
overthrow the Republican regime in Berlin, Hitler had every hope of
double-crossing his Bavarian allies once he was in power. It was equally
possible for Kahr to use Hitler and the forces of the Kampfbund. Out of
this ambiguous situation an uneasy alliance developed between Kahr
and the Nazis, each trying to exploit the other’s support and subordinate
the other’s political ends to his own. Once again the critical decision lay
with the Army, this time with the local commander in Bavaria, General
von Lossow. Like Kahr, however, Lossow never quite succeeded in
making up his mind until events decided for him.

In October, 1923, the quarrel between Munich and Berlin flared up,
under direct provocation from Hitler. When the Nazi Volkischer
Beobachter printed scurrilous attacks on Seeckt, Stresemann and
Gessler, the Minister of Defence in Berlin used his emergency powers to
demand the suppression of the paper, as well as the arrest of Captain

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Heiss, Captain Ehrhardt and Lieutenant Rossbach. Kahr refused to
take orders from Berlin, and when the Minister of Defence went over his
head and ordered General von Lossow to execute the ban, Lossow let
himself be persuaded by Kahr into disobeying his orders. The next step
was Berlin’s removal of Lossow from his post on 20 October and the
appointment of General Kress von Kressenstem to take over his
command. But again Kahr intervened. He announced that Lossow would
remain in command of the Army m Bavaria, and exacted a special
oath of allegiance to the Bavarian Government from both officers and
men, an open breach of the constitution. On 27 October Kahr rejected an
appeal from President Ebert, demanded the resignation of the Reich
Government and ordered the armed bands which supported him — not
the Kampfbmd — to concentrate on the borders of Bavaria and Thuringia.

All this suited Hitler admirably. Power in Bavaria was concentrated
in the hands of a triumvirate consisting of Kahr, Lossow and Colonel
Seisser, the head of the State police An open rupture had occurred be-
tween Munich and Berlin. It was now, Hitler argued, only a question of
whether Berlin marched on Munich, or Munich on Berlin. The situation
in Saxony and Thuringia, on the northern borders of Bavaria, offered a
splendid pretext for Kahr and Lossow to act. For there the Social
Democratic cabinets of the two Slate Governments had been broadened
to bring the Communists into power as partners of the Social Democrats,
thereby providing the Communists with a spring-board for their own
seizure of power Action by the Bavarian Government to suppress this
threat of a Left-wing revolution would undoubtedly command wide
sqpport, and, once at Dresden, Hitler reckoned, it would not be long
before they were in Berlin.

Lossow and Kahr were full of smooth assurances that they would
move as soon as the situation was ripe, yet Hitler and Roehm were mis-
trustful They suspected that behind the fagade of German Nationalism,
with Its cry of ‘Mm/ mch Beilin” (On to Berlin!), which Kahr kept up to
satisfy the Kampfbund, he was playing with Bavarian separatist ideas
under the very different banner of “Los von Berlin” {kwaiy from Berlin!).
Preparations went forward and discussions continued between Kahr,
Lossow and the Kampfbund leaders, but each side watched the other
with growing suspicion.

Meanwhile the Government in Berlin was beginning slowly to master
its difficulties. By the end of October the threat of a Communist revo-
lution had been broken. A Communist rising in Hamburg had been
suppressed by the police, while General Mueller, acting on orders from
Berlin, had turned out the offending governments in Saxony and Thur-

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924 '

iogia, thus depriving the Bavarian conspirators of their best pretext for
intervention outside their own frontiers. These developments did not
fail to impress Kahr and Lossow, and at the beginning of November
Colonel Seisser, the third of the tnumvirate, was sent to Berlin to size up
the situation.

For Hitler, however, there could be no drawing back. He had com-
mitted himself too openly and worked his supporters up to such a pitch
of expectation that a failure to act now must mean the collapse of the
Nazi Party and the total discredit of its leader. Lieutenant Wilhelm
Bruckner later gave evidence that he had begged Hitler to strike soon,
since “the day is coming when I won’t be able to hold the men back. If
nothing happens now, they’ll run away from us.” Hitler could not
afford to repeat the fiasco of 1 May. Moreover, if the tide of events had
really set in Stresemann’s favour, Germany might begin to recover from
the disorder and insecurity which had haunted her since 1918, and Hitler
lose the opportunity which still remained. By November, Roehm says,
the preparations for action were complete, and the state of tension in
Munich was such that the crisis had to find an immediate solution one
way or another; it could not be prolonged.

Seisser’s report from Berlin was far from encouraging. He was con-
vinced that there would be no support in Northern Germany for an up-
rising. Kahr and Lossow, who had no wish to become involved in an
enterprise that was bound to fail, insisted at a meeting with the Kampf-
bund leaders on 6 November that they alone should decide the time to
act and that they should not be hustled. It is possible that, left to them-
selves, they would have continued to sit on the fence until a compromise
with the Stresemann Government could be arranged. If Kahr stfll
seriously contemplated action, his inclination was more and more
towards independent action by Bavaria, dropping altogether the idea of
a march on Berlin and national revolution. Hitler was by now con-
vinced that the only way to get Kahr and Lossow to do what he wanted
was to present them with a fait accompli and burn their boats for them.
Otherwise, he feared, they might carry out their own coup without
him.

The original plan, proposed by Scheubner-Richter and Rosenberg,
was to take advantage of the presence of Kahr, Lossow, and Seisser as
well as the Crown Prince Rupprecht, at the parade to be held in Munich
on 4 November, Totengedenktag, the Day of Homage to the Dead.
Armed Stormtroopers were to surround them just before the parade and
persuade them at the point of the pistol to lead the national revolution
which Hitler would then proclaim. This plan fell through, but its

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

essential features were kept and put into operation on 8 November.

A second plan was now sketched: to concentrate all the forces of the
Kampfbimd during the night of 10 November on the Frottmaninger
Heath, march into Munich the next day, seize the key points and push
Kahr, Lossow and Seisser into action under the impression of this
demonstration of force. At this moment it was announced that a big
meeting would be held in the Burgerbrau Keller at which Kahr was to
speak on the evening of 8 November. Lossow and Seisser, together with
most of the other Bavarian political leaders, were all expected to be
present. Kahr refused to see Hitler on the morning of the 8th, and
Hitler was soon convinced that this meeting was to be the prelude to the
proclamation of Bavarian independence and the restoration of the
Wittelsbach monarchy on the 12th. Whether this was in fact Kahr’s
intention remains uncertain, but on the spur of the moment Hitler
decided to move forward the date for action from the 11th to the 8th,
and so forestall Kahr.

Shortly after Kahr had begun to speak on the evening of 8 November
the hall was surrounded by the S.A. and Hitler burst in at the head of a
group of armed men. Carrying a pistol in his hand, he leapt on to a table
and fired at the ceiling to secure attention. Before anyone had grasped
what was happening, Hitler pushed his way on to the platform and
shouted out; “The National Revolution has begun. This hall is occupied
by six hundred heavily armed men. No one may leave the hall. The
Bavarian and Reich Governments have been removed and a provisional
National Government formed. The Army and police barracks have been
occupied, troops and police are marching on the city under the swastika
banner.” This was a bold piece of bluff, but no one could be certain that
It was just bluff. There were six hundred S.A. men outside, and a
machine-gun in the vestibule. Moreover, with the help of Poehner, the
ex-Police President of Munich, Hitler had persuaded Frick, who was
still an official in the Police Department, to telephone the police officer
at the hall and order him not to intervene, but simply to report if any-
thing happened. Leaving Goering to keep order in the hall, Hitler pushed
Kahr, Lossow and Seisser into a side room. Meanwhile Scheubner-
Richter was driving through the night to Ludwigshohe to fetch General
Ludendorff, whom Hitler wanted as the figurehead of his revolution.

Hitler, who was wildly excited, began the interview with Kahr and his
companions in melodramatic style; “No one leaves this room alive with-
out my permission.” He announced that he had formed a new govern-
ment with Ludendorff. (This, too, was untrue; Ludendorff knew nothing

THE YEARS OF SlROGGLt, 1919-1924

of what was happening.) They had only one choice: to join him. V/avmg
his gun, and looking as if he was half out of his mind, he shouted: “I
have four shots in my pistol. Three for my collaborators if they abandon
me. The last is for myself.” Setting the revolver to his head, he declared .
“If I am not victorious by tomorrow afternoon, I shall be a dead man.”

The three men were less impressed than they should have been. They
found it difficult to take Hitler’s raving at all seriously, despite the
gun and the armed guards at the windows. Lossow later claimed that as
they went out of the hall he had whispered to Kahr and Seisser:
'‘Komoedie spielen" (Play a part). Kahr tried to put on a brave front:
“You can arrest me or shoot me. Whether I die or not is no matter.”
Seisser reproached Hitler with breaking his word of honour. Hitler was
aU contrition: “Yes, I did. Forgive me. I had to, for the sake of the
Fatherland.” But as soon as Kahr began to whisper to the silent Lossow,
he flew into a rage and shouted: “No talking without my permission.”

So far he had made little progress. Now, leaving the room without a
word, he dashed into the hall and announced that the three men had
agreed to join him in forming a new German government:

The Bavarian Ministry is removed. I propose that a Bavarian government
shall be formed consisting of a Regent and a Prime Minister invested with
dictatorial powers. I propose Herr von Kahr as Regent and Herr Poehner as
Prime Mmister. The government of the November criminals and the Reich
President are declared to be removed. A new National Government will be
nominated this very day, here m Munich. A German National Army will be
formed immediately. ... I propose that, until accounts have been finally
settled with the November criminals, the direction of policy in the National
Government be taken over by me. Ludendorff will take over the leadership
of the German National Army. Lossow will be German Reichswehr
Minister, Seisser Reich Police Mimster. The task of the provisional German
National Government is to organize the march on that sinful Babel, Berlin,
and save the German people. . . . Tomorrow will see either a National
Government m Germany or us dead.^

This was a clever move. The announcement that agreement had been
reached completely changed the mood of the crowd in the hall, which
shouted its approval: the sound of the cheering impressed the three men
who were still held under guard in the side room.

No sooner had Hitler returned to them than Ludendorff appeared. He
was thoroughly angry with Hitler for springing a surprise on him, and
furious at the distribution of offices which made Hitler, not Ludendorff,

^ The whole of this account, including the text of Hitler’s words, is based on the
subsequent court proceedings m Munich: Der Hitler-Prozess {Deutscher Volksverlag,
Munich, 1924).

L H — D

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

the dictator of Germany, and left him with the command of an army
which did not exist. But he kept himself under control: this was a great
national event, he said, and he could only advise the others to collab-
orate. Hitler added: “We can no longer turn back; our action is already
inscribed on the pages of world history.”

Lossow later denied that he had replied: “I shall take your Excellency’s
wishes as an order,” but Ludendorff’s intervention turned the scales.
When Kahr still made difficulties. Hitler used all his charm: “If Your
Excellency permits, I will drive out to see His Majesty (the Bavarian
Crown Prince Rupprecht) at once and inform him that the German
people have arisen and made good the injustice done to His Majesty’s
late lamented father.” At that even Kahr capitulated and agreed to
co-operate as the King’s deputy.

In apparent unity they all filed back into the hall. While the audience
chmbed on to the seats and cheered in enthusiasm, each made a brief
speech, swore loyalty and shook hands on the platform. Hitler, exultant
and relieved, spoke with passion. “I am going to fulfil the vow I made to
myself five years ago when I was a blind cripple in the military hospital :
to know neither rest nor peace until the November criminals had been
overthrown, until on the ruins of the wretched Germany of today there
should have arisen once more a Germany of power and greatness, of
freedom and splendour.”

Barely had this touching scene of reconciliation been completed than
Hitler was called out to settle a quarrel which had started when Storm-
troopers of the Bund Oberland tried to occupy the Engineers’ barracks.
By a bad error of judgment he left the hall without taking proper pre-
cautions. As soon as Hitler had gone, and the audience began to pour
out of the exits, Lossow excused himself on the grounds that he must go
to his office to issue orders, and left unobtrusively, followed by Kahr and
Seisser. It was the last that was seen of General von Lossow or von
Kahr that night.

Hitler already had several hundred Stormtroopers of the S.A. and
Kampfbund at his command. By morning these had grown to some three
thousand men, for considerable forces continued to come in from the
countryside during the night— Strasser, for example, bringing a hundred
and fifty from Landshut While his own bodyguard {Stoss Truppe Hitler.
the origin of the later black-shirted S.S.) occupied the offices of the Socia]
Democratic Mitnchener Post and smashed the machines, the Reichsknegs-
flagge, under Roehm’s leadership, seized the Wehrkreis-Kommando (the
Army H.Q.) in the War Ministry on SchSnfeldstrasse, and set up barbed-

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

wire and machine guns. Hitler, whose mam forces were kept on the othei
side of the river, bivouacking in the gardens or sleeping on the floor of
the Burgerbrdu Keller, came over to Roehm before midnight and heid a
council of war with Ludendorlf, Knebel and Weber. As time passed,
however, they became concerned at the absence of any news from
Lossow or Kahr, and were at a loss what to do next. Messages to Lossow
at the 19th Infantry Regiment’s barracks produced no answer; nor did
the messengers return. The night was allowed to pass without the seizure
of a single key position, apart from Roehra’s occupation of the Army
headquarters. This was partly due to the Kampfbund leaders’ ignorance
of what was happening and unwillingness to recognize that they had been
deceived; even more, however, to the improvised character of the whole
alfair. Finally, between six and seven o’clock m the morning, Poehner
and Major Hiihnlein were dispatched to occupy the police headquarters,
but were promptly arrested instead, together with Frick.

As General von Lossow returned from the Burgerbrdu Keller he was
greeted by Lieutenant-General von Danner, the commander of the
Munich garrison, with the cold remark; “All that of course was bluff,
Excellency?” In case Lossow had any doubts, Seeckt telegraphed from
Berlin that, if the Army in Bavaria did not suppress the putsch, he would
do It himself. There was considerable sympathy with Hitler and Roehra
among the junior officers from the rank of major downwards, and the
cadets of the Infantry School came over to Hitler’s side under the
persuasion of the ex-Freikorps leader, Lieutenant Rossbach. But the
senior officers were indignant at the insolence of this ex-corporal, and in
the end discipline held. From the infantry barracks on the Oberwiesen^
feld orders were sent out to bring in reinforcements from outlying
garrisons. Meanwhile the Bavarian State Government was transferred
to Regensburg, and Kahr issued a proclamation denouncing the
promises extorted in the Burgerbrdu Keller and dissolving the Nazi
Party and the Kampfbund. From Crown Prince Rupprecht came a brief
but pointed recommendation to crush the putsch at all costs, using force
if necessary. Rupprecht had no use for a movement which had Luden-
dorff as one of its leaders.

By the morning of 9 November it was clear that the attempt had mis-
carried At dawn Hitler, Ludendorlf and the other leaders returned to
the Burgerbrdu, leaving Roehm to hold out in the War Ministry. For a
time Hitler considered retiring from Munich to Rosenheim and rallying
his forces before trying to force his way back into the city. But this was
rejected by Ludendorlf. Hitler then conceived the idea of getting Crown

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Prince Rupprecht to intercede and settle matters peacefully. Lieutenant
Neunzert, an old friend of the Crown Prince, was sent otf to Rupprecht’s
castle near Berchtesgaden, but failing to find a car had to travel by tram
and arrived too late for his message to have any effect. For in the mean-
time, Ludendorff, who was convinced that the Army would never fire on
the legendary figure of the First World War, had persuaded Hitler,
against his better judgment, that they must take the offensive and try to
restore the position by marching on Lossow’s headquarters. Once he
stood face to face with the officers and men of the Army, Ludendorff
was convinced that they would obey him and not Lossow. According to
his own account at the subsequent trial, Hitler seems also to have
believed that public opinion m Munich might still be won to his side —
“and Messrs. Kahr, Lossow and Seisser could not be so foohsh as to
turn machine-guns on the aroused people.”

While these anxious discussions were being held in the BUrgerbidu
Keller, on the far side of the river, troops of the Regular Army had
surrounded Roehm and his men in the centre of the city. Both sides
were reluctant to open fire— there were many old comrades among
Roe h m’s Stormtroopers and many among the Army captains and lieu-
tenants who sympathized with his aims. All that Roehm could do was to
sit tight and await events.

Shortly after eleven o’clock on the morning of 9 November— the
anniversary of Napoleon’s coup d'dtat of Brumaire in 1799 — a column of
two or three thousand men left the Burgerbrdu Keller, on the south
bank of the River Isar, and headed for the Ludwig Bridge leading to the
centre of the city. During the night a number of hostages had been taken,
and it was with the threat of shooting these that Goering, the leader of
the S.A., persuaded the officer commanding the police at the bridge to
let them pass. At the head of the column fluttered the swastika flag and
the banner of the Bund Oberland. In the first row marched Hitler,
between Ludendorff, Scheubner-Richter and Ulrich Graf on one side.
Dr. Weber, Feder and Kriebel on the other. Most of the men carried
arms, and Hitler himself had a pistol in his hand. Crowds thronged the
streets and there was an atmosphere of excitement and expectation.
Julius Streicher, who had been haranguing the crowd in the Marienplatz,
climbed down to take his place in the second rank. Rosenberg and
Albrecht von Graefe, the sole representative of the North German
Nationalists, who had arrived that morning at Ludendorff’s urgent
summons, trudged unhappily along with the rest.

From the Marienplatz the column swung down the narrow Residenz-
strasse towards the Odeonsplatz, singing as it went. Beyond lay the old

100

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

War Ministry, where Roehm was besieged. The time was half past
twelve.

The police, armed with carbines, were drawn up in a cordon across the
end of the street to prevent the column debouching on to the broad
Place beyond. The Stormtroopers completely outnumbered the police —
there were no troops present— but the narrowness of the street prevented
them bringing their superior numbers to bear. Who fired first has never
been settled. One of the National Socialists — Ulrich Graf— ran forward
and shouted to the police officer: “Don’t fire, Ludcndorff and Hitler are
coming,” while Hitler cried out: “Surrender!” At this moment a shot
rang out and a hail of bullets swept the street. The first man to fall was
Scheubner-Richter, with whom Hitler had been marching arm-in-arm.
Hitler fell, either pulled down or seeking cover. The shooting lasted only
a minute, but sixteen Nazis and three police already lay dead or dying
in the street. Goering was badly wounded, and was carried into a house.
Weber, the leader of the Bund Oberland, stood against the wall weeping
hysterically. All was confusion, neither side being at all sure what to do
next. One man alone kept his head. Erect and unperturbed, General
Ludendorff, with his adjutant. Major Streck, by his side, marched
steadily on, pushed through the line of police and reached the Place
beyond.

The situation might still have been saved, but not a single man
followed him. Hitler at the critical moment lost his nerve. According to
the independent evidence of two eye-witnesses, one of them a National
Socialist — Dr. Walther Schulz and Dr. Karl Gebhard— Hitler was the
first to scramble to his feet and, stumbling back towards the end of the
procession, allowed himself to be pushed by Schulz into a yellow motor-
car on the Max Josef Platz. He was undoubtedly in great pain from a
dislocated shoulder, and probably beheved himself to have been
wounded. But there was no denying that under fire the Nazi leaders had
broken and fled. Hitler the first. Only two among them had been killed
or badly wounded, Scheubner-Richter and Goering; the other killed and
wounded were all in the following ranks, exposed to the fire by the
action of their leaders in taking cover.

Two hours later Roehm was persuaded to capitulate and was taken
into custody. Goering was smuggled across the Austrian frontier by his
wife. On 11 November Hitler was arrested at Uffing, where he was
being nursed by Hanfstaengl’s mother and sister.

101

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

VII

In many ways the attempt of 8-9 November was a remarkable achieve-
ment for a man like Hitler who had started from nothing only a few
years before. In less than a couple of hours on the night of 8 November
he had transformed the pohtical situation in Bavaria and made a
revolution by sheer bluff. However impermanent a triumph, the scene
m the Biirgerbrau Keller, with Kahr and Hitler shaking hands before
the cheering crowd, and Generals Ludendorff and von Lossow agreeing
to serve under the dictatorship of the ex-corporal — a scene which would
have seemed incredible an hour before — ^was evidence of political
talent of an unusual kind.

But the mistakes had been gross. The Kainpfbund disposed of con-
siderable forces — many more than those who took part in the march.
They only needed to be concentrated and used to occupy such obvious
positions as police headquarters, the central telephone exchange, the
railway station and the power station. For all their talk of a putsch,
not one of the rebel leaders had thought out the practical problems of
making a revolution. Instead, S.A. detachments straggled into Munich
all through the night and half the next day, and were left to stand about
while their commanders argued what they should do. Finally, when
they did decide to march, these men, who for years had appealed openly
to violence, crumpled up and fled before one volley from a force of
armed police whom they outnumbered by thirty to one. Worst of all,
from Hitler’s point of view, was the contrast between his own behaviour
under fire — the first to get to his feet and make his escape by car, leaving
the wounded, the dead and the rest of his followers to fend for them-
selves — and that of Ludendorff, who, in the sight of all, had marched
steadily forward and brushed aside the police carbines with contemptuous
ease.

The truth is, however, that Hitler’s plans had miscarried long before
the column set out for the Odeonsplatz. As he admitted later: “We
went in the conviction that this was the end, in one way or another. I
know of one who, on the steps as we set out, said: ‘This is now the finish.’
Everyone in himself carried with him this convictign.”^ Hitler had
never intended to use force; from the beginning his conception had
been that of a revolution in agreement with the political and imhtary

^ Hitler m the Burgerbrdu Keller at Munich, 8 November, 1935; Baynes: voL I,
page 135.

102

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

authorities. “We never thought to carry through a revolt against the
Army; it was with it that we believed we should succeed.”^ This explains
why no adequate preparations had been made for a seizure of power
by arms. The coup was to be limited to forcing Kahr and Lossow into
acting with him, in the behef that it was only hesitation, not opposition,
that held them back. Again and again Hitler had told his men that
when the moment came they need not worry, neither the Army nor
the police would fire on them. The shots on the Odeonsplatz represented
something more than the resistance any revolutionary party may expect
to meet and take in its stride; they represented the final collapse of
the preimses upon which the whole attempt had been constructed. It
was this that accounted for Hitler’s despondency on the morning of
9 November and the absence of any plan. From the moment it became
certain that Lossow and Kahr had taken sides against him. Hitler knew
that the attempt had failed. There was a slender chance that a show of
force might still swing the Army back to his side, and so he agreed to
march. But it was to be a demonstration, not the beginning of a putsch;
the last thing Hitler wanted, or was prepared for, was to shoot it out
with the Army.

Never was Hitler’s political ability more clearly shown than in the
way he recovered from this set-back For the man who, on 9 November,
1923, appeared to be broken and finished as a political leader—
and had himself believed this — succeeded by April, 1924, in making
hinjself one of the most-talked-of figures in Germany, and turned his
trial for treason into a pohtical triumph. ,

The opportunity for this lay in the equivocal political situation in
Bavaria, which had saved him once before after the fiasco of 1 May.
This time he had to stand his trial, but the trial was held in Munich,
and it was a trial for a conspiracy in which the chief witnesses for the
prosecution — Kahr, Lossow and Seisser — had been almost as deeply
involved as the accused. The full story was one which most of the politi-
cal leaders of Bavaria, the Bavarian People’s Party and the Monarchists,
were only too anxious to avoid being made public. Hitler exploited this
situation to the full.

The trial began before a special court, sitting in the old Munich
Infantry School in the Blutenburgstrasse, on 26 February, 1924. It
lasted for twenty-four days. For the whole of this period it was front-
page news in every German newspaper, and a large group of foreign
correspondents attended the trial. For the first time Hitler had an audi-
^ Hitler at Munich, 8 November, 1933; Baynes: vol. I, page 133.

103

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

ence outside the frontiers of Bavaria. Hitler’s old protector and future
minister, Franz Giirtner, was still Minister of Justice in the Bavarian
Government, and active on his behalf behind the scenes. One of the
features of the trial was the leniency with which the judges treated the
accused in court, and the mildness of their rebukes to Hitler for his
interruptions.

Nine men sat beside Hitler in the dock, all accused of high treason:
Ludendorff, Poehner and Frick; Roehm, Weber and Kriebel, the other
leaders of the Kampfbund; and Lieutenants Bruckner, Wagner and
Fernet, three lesser figures who had been active leaders of the Storm-
troopers. Of the ten, Ludendorff was by far the most distinguished
and famous, but it was Hitler who took the lead and stood out from
all the rest.

From the first day Hitler’s object was to recover the political initiative,
and virtually put the chief witnesses for the prosecution in the dock. He
did this by the simple device of assuming full responsibility for the
attempt to overthrow the Republic, and, instead of apologizing or trying
to belittle the seriousness of this crime, indignantly reproaching Lossow,
Kahr and Seisser with the responsibility for its failure. This was a highly
effective way of appealing to nationalist opinion, and turning the tables
on the prosecution. In his opening speech^ Hitler declared: “One thing
was certain, Lossow, Kahr and Seisser had the same goal that we had
—to get rid of the Reich Government with its present international
and parliamentary government. If our enterprise was actually high
treason, then during this whole period Lossow, Kahr and Seisser must
have been committing high treason along with us, for during all these
weeks we talked of nothing but the aims of which we now stand
accused.”

This was perfectly true, as everybody in the court knew, and Hitler
pressed his advantage. “I alone bear the responsibility,” he concluded,
“but I am not a criminal because of that. If today I stand here as a
revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the Revolution. There
is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918. It is impos-
sible for me to have committed high treason, for the treason would not
consist m the events of 8 November, but in all our activities and our
slate of mind in the preceding months— and then I wonder why those
who did exactly the same are not sitting here with me. If we comnutted
high treason, then countless others did the same. I deny all guilt as long
as I do not find added to our little company the gentlemen who helped
even in the pettiest details of the preparation of the affair. ... I feel

^ Der Hitler-Pi ozess, pages 18-28.

104

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

myself the best of Germans who wanted the best for the Gernlan
people.”

Neither Kahr nor Seisser had the skill to withstand such tactics,
while the judges sat placidly through Hitler’s mounting attack on the
Republic whose authority they represented, only interrupting to reprove
those who applauded openly m the court. One man alone stood up to
Hitler, and this surprisingly enough, was General von Lossow.^

Von Lossow was an angry man. His career had ended abruptly as a
result of the November alfair, and he had to listen in silence while his
reputation was torn to shreds in the court, and he was represented as
a coward, who had lacked the courage to declare either for or against
the conspiracy. Now he had his chance to reply, and he expressed all
the contempt of the officer caste for this jumped-up, ill-educated, loud-
mouthed agitator who had never risen above the rank of corporal and
now tried to dictate to the Army the pohcy it should pursue. “I was
no unemployed comitadj'i,” he declared; “at that time I occupied a high
position in the State. I should never have dreamed of trying to get myself
a better position by means of a putsch.” Lossow dealt bluntly with
Hitler’s own ambitions: “He thought himself the German Mussolini
or the German Gambetta, and his followers, who had entered on the
heritage of the Byzantine monarchy, regarded him as the German
Messiah.” For his own part he looked upon Hitler as fitted to play no
more than the role of a political drummer. “The well-known eloquence
of Herr Hitler at first made a strong impression on me. But the more
I heard him, the fainter this impression became. I realized that his long
speeches were almost always about the same thing, that his views were
partly a matter-of-course for any German of nationalist views, ahd
partly showed that Hitler lacked a sense of reahty and the ability to see
what was possible and practicable.” In his closing speech the Public
Prosecutor used the same patronizing language: “At first Hitler kept
himself free of personal ambition for power. Later on, when he was
being idolized by certain circles, he thoughtlessly allowed himself to
be carried beyond the position assigned to him.”

But Hitler had the last word. In cross-examination he made Lossow
lose his temper, and in his final speech he established a complete mastery
over the court. Lossow had said he was fit only to be “the drummer”
and had accused him of ambition.

How petty are the thoughts of small men (Hitler retorted).^ Believe me, I do

not regard the acqmsition of a Minister’s portfolio as a thing worth striving

^ Der Hitler-Proiess, Eleventh day, testimony of Lieutenant-Gensral von Lossow,
pages 109-124.

“ Hitler’s closing speech, Der Hitler-Frozess, pages 262-9.

LH — D’

105

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

for. I do not hold it worthy of a great man to endeavour to go down in
history just by becoming a Minister. One might be in danger of being
buried beside other Ministers. I aimed from the first at something a thousand
times higher than a Mmister. I wanted to become the destroyer of Marxism,
I am going to achieve this task, and if I do, the title of Minister will be an
absurdity as far as I am concerned. When I stood for the first time at the
grave of Richard Wagner my heart overflowed with pride in a man who had
forbidden any such inscription as: Here lies Privy Councillor, Music-
Director, His Excellency Baron Richard von Wagner. I was proud that this
man and so many others in German history were content to give their
names to history without titles. It was not from modesty that I wanted
to be a drummer in those days. That was the highest aspiration: the
rest is nothing.

The man who is born to be a dictator is not compelled; he wills it. He is
not driven forward, but drives himself. There is nothing immodest about
this. Is it immodest for a worker to drive himself towards heavy labour?
Is it presumptuous of a man with the high forehead of a thinker to ponder
through the nights till he gives the world an invention? The man who feels
called upon to govern a people has no right to say: If you want me or
summon me, I will co-operate. No, it is his duty to step forward.

Looking back on the trial years later. Hitler remarked:

When the Kapp Putsch was at an end, and those who were responsible for
It were brought before the Republican courts, then each held up his hand
and swore that he knew nothing, had intended nothing, wished nothing.
That was what destroyed the bourgeois world — that they had not the
courage to stand by their act, that they had not the courage to step before
the judge and say: “Yes, that was what we wanted to do; we wanted to
destroy the State. . . It is not decisive whether one conquers; what is
fiecessary is that one must with heroism and courage make oneself res-
ponsible for the consequences,^

Hitler not only took the responsibility for what had happened and
left to those who had refused to march with him the odium of abandon-
ing the national cause; he deliberately built up the failure of 8 and 9
November into one of the great propaganda legends of the movement.
Year after year, even after the outbreak of war, he went back to the
Burgerbrdu Keller in Munich on 8 November, and to the Feldherrnhalle,
the War Memorial on the Odeonsplatz, to renew the memory of what
had happened there on that grey November morning in 1923. Regularly
each year he spoke to the Nazi Old Guard (the AlhKdmpfer) in the
Burgerbrdu Keller, and the next morning on the Odeonsplatz solemnly
recalled the martyrs of the movement who died for their faith.

^ Hitler at Munich, 8 November, 1934; Baynes: voL I, pages 152-3.

106

THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE, 1919-1924

When the bodies of the sixteen dead of 1923 were re-interred in 1935
in a new memorial. Hitler said; “They now pass into the German
immortality. . . . For us they are not dead. These temples are no crypts:
they are an eternal guard post. Here they stand for Germany and keep
guard over our people. Here they lie as true witnesses to our move-
ment.”^ These were the men whom twelve years before Hitler had left
dying in the street while he fled. By skilful propaganda he had turned
the fiasco of 1923 and his own failure as a leader into retrospective
triumph.

But the unsuccessful putsch of 1923 has a still more important place
m the history of the Nazi movement for the lessons which Hitler drew
from it and by which he shaped his political tactics in the years that
followed. In 1936, three years after he became Chancellor, he summed
up the lessons of that earlier attempt to seize power: “We recognized
that it IS not enough to overthrow the old State, but that the new State
must previously have been built up and be practically ready to one’s
hand. And so only a few days after the collapse I formed a new decision:
that now without any haste the conditions must be created which would
exclude the possibility of a second failure. Later you lived through
another revolution. But what a difference between them! In 1933 it was
no longer a question of overthrowing a state by an act of violence;
meanwhile the new State had been built up and all that there remained
to do was to destroy the last remnants of the old State — and that took
but a few hours.”^

When Hitler spoke of a “new decision” he was exaggerating; he had
never intended to seize power by force. His revolution — even in 1923 -v
had been designed as a “revolution by permission of the Herr President.”
But the failure of 1923 strengthened his hand. “After the putsch I could
say to all those in the Party what otherwise it would never have been
possible for me to say. My answer to my critics was. Now the battle
will be waged as I wish it and not otherwise “This evening and this
day (8-9 November) made it possible for us afterwards to fight a battle
for ten years by legal means; for, make no mistake, if we had not acted
then I should never have been able to found a revolutionary movement,
and yet all the time maintain legality. One could have said to me with
justice: You talk like all the others and you will act just as little as all
the others.”^

Hitler had already laid the foundations of this policy at the trial of

^ Hitler at Munich, 9 November, 1935, Baynes; vol I, pages 158-9.

® Hitler at Munich, 9 November, 1936, Baynes; vol. I, pages 155-6.

® Hitler at Munich, 9 November, 1934, Baynes; vol I, page 161.

* Hitler at Mumch, 9 November, 1933, Baynes; vol. I, page 152,

107

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

1924. In his closing speech, he went out of his way to avoid recrimina-
tion and renew the old offer of alliance with the Army. Hie failure of
1923 was the failure of individuals, of a Lossow and a Kahr; the most
powerful and the most permanent of German institutions, the Army,
was not involved. “I believe that the hour will come when the masses,
who today stand in the street with our swastika banner, will unite with
those who fired upon them. . . . When I learned that it was the police
who fired, I was happy that it was not the Reichswehr which had stained
its record; the Reichswehr stands as untarnished as before. One day
the hour will come when the Reichswehr will stand at our side, officers
and men.”

Tile President of the Court rebuked Hitler for his slighting reference
to the police, but Hitler brushed aside his interruption.

The army we have formed is growing from day to day. ... I nourish the
proud hope that one day the hour will come when these rough companies
will grow to battalions, the battalions to regiments, the regiments to
divisions, that the old cockade will be taken from the mud, that the old flags
will wave again, that there will be a reconciliation at the last great divine
judgment which we are prepared to face. . . . For it is not you, gentlemen,
who pass judgment on us. That judgment is spoken by the eternal court of
history. What judgment you will hand down, I know. But that court will not
ask us: “Did you commit high treason, or did you not?” That court will
judge us, the Quartermaster-General of the old Army (LudendorfiF), his
officers and soldiers, as Germans who wanted only the good of their own
people and Fatherland ; who wanted to fight and die. You may pronounce us
guilty a thousand times over, but the goddess of the eternal court of history
will smile and tear to tatters the brief of the State Prosecutor and the sentence
of this court. For she acquits us.^

It took Hitler nine years to convince the Army that he was right.
Meanwhile, as Konrad Heiden remarks, the verdict of the court was
not so far from the judgment of the Goddess of History. Giirtner had
seen to that. In face of all the evidence Ludendorff was acquitted, and
Hitler was given the minimum sentence of five years’ imprisonment.
When the lay judges protested at the severity of the sentence, the Pre-
sident of the Court assured them that Hitler would certainly be pardoned
and released on probation. Despite the objection of the State Prosecutor
and the attempts of the pohce to get him deported. Hitler was in fact
released from prison after serving less than nine months of his sentence
— and promptly resumed his agitation against the Republic. Such were
the penalties of high treason in a State where disloyalty to the regime
was the surest recommendation to mercy.

^ Det Hnlet-Ptozess, page 269.

108

CHAPTER THREE

THE YEARS OF WAITING

1924—1931

Fifty miles west of Munich in the wooded valley of the Lech
lies the snmll town of Landsberg. It was here that Hitler served his term
of imprisonment from 11 November, 1923, to 20 December, 1924, with
only the interlude of the trial in Munich to interrupt it. In the early
summer of 1924 some forty other National Socialists were in prison with
him, and they had an easy and comfortable life. They ate well— Hitler
became quite fat in prison— had as many visitors as they wished, and
spent much of their time out of doors in the garden, where, like the rest.
Hitler habitually wore leather shorts with a Tyrolean jacket. Emil
Maurice acted partly as Hitler’s batman, partly as his secretary, a job
which he later relinquished to Rudolf Hess, who had voluntarily returned
from Austria to share his leader’s imprisonment. Hitler’s large and sunny
room. No. 7, was on the first floor, a mark of privilege which he shared
with Weber, Kriebel and Hess. On his thirty-fifth birthday, which fell
shortly after the trial, the parcels and flowers he received filled several
rooms. He had a large correspondence in addition to his visitors, and as
many newspapers and books as he wished. Hitler presided at the midday
meal, claiming and receiving the respect due to him as leader af the
Party: much of the time, however, from July onwards he shut himself
up m his room to dictate Mein Kampf, which was begun in prison and
taken down by Emil Maurice and Hess.

Max Amann, who was to publish the book, had originally hoped for
an account, full of sensational revelations, of the November putsch.
But Hitler was too canny for that; there were to be no recriminations.
His own title for the book was Four and a Half Years of Struggle against
Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice, reduced by Amann to Mein Kampf—
My Struggle. Even then Amann was to be disappointed. For the book
contains very httle autobiography, but is filled with page after page of
turgid discussion of Hitler’s ideas, written in a verbose style which is
both difficult and dull to read.

109

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Hitler took the writing of Mein Kampf with great seriousness.
Dietrich Eckart, Feder, and Rosenberg had all published books or
pamphlets and Hitler was anxious to establish his own position of
intellectual as well as political authority in the Party. He was eager to
prove that he too, even though he had never been to a university and had
left school without a certificate, had read and thought deeply, acquiring
his own Weltanschauung. It is this thwarted intellectual ambition, the
desire to make people take him seriously as an original thinker, which
accounts for the pretentiousness of the style, the use of long words and
constant repetitions, all the tricks of a half-educated man seeking to
give weight to his words. As a result Mein Kampf a remarkably inter-
esting book for anyone trying to understand Hitler’s mind, but as a
party tract or a political best-seller it was a failure, which few, even
among the party members, had the patience to read.

While Hitler turned his energies to writing Mein Kampf the Party fell
to pieces; 9 November had been followed by the proscription of the
Party and its organizations throughout the Reich, the suppression of
the Volkischer Beobachler and the arrest or flight of the leaders. Goering
remained abroad until 1927, Scheubner-Richter had been killed and
Dietrich Eckart, who had been ill for some time, died at the end of 1923.
Quanels soon broke out among those who remained at liberty or were
released from prison.

Before his arrest Hitler had managed to send a pencilled note to
Rosenberg with the brief message: “Dear Rosenberg, from now on you
will lead the movement.” As Rosenberg himself admits in his memoirs,
this was a surprising choice. Although at one time he had great influence
oTi Hitler, Rosenberg was no man of action and had never been one of
the small circle who led the conspiracy. As a leader he was ineffective,
finding it difficult either to make up his mind or to assert his authority.
It was precisely the lack of these qualities which attracted Hitler;
Rosenberg as his deputy would represent no danger to his own position
in the Party.

Rosenberg, who was not only an intellectual but respectable and prim
as well, was soon on the worst terms with the rougher elements in the
Party, notably the two rival Jew-bainter and lechers, Julius Streicher and
Hermann Esser, who combined to attack every move made by Rosen-
berg, Gregor Strasser, Ludendorff and Poehner, and accused them of
undermining Hitler’s position. These in turn retorted by demanding the
others’ expulsion from the Party and Hitler’s repudiation of them. But
Hitler declined to take sides: if pushed to decide, he preferred Streicher,
Esser and Amann, however disreputable, because they were loyal to him

110

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

and dependent on him. Men like Strasser, with ten times the others’
abilities, were for that very reason more inclined to follow an indepen-
dent line.

Political issues of importance were involved in these personal quarrels.
What was to be done now that the Party had been dissolved and Hitler
was in prison? Hitler’s answer, however camouflaged, was simple:
Nothing. He had no wish to see the Party revive its fortunes without
him. But Gregor Strasser, Roehm and Rosenberg, supported by
Ludendorff, were anxious to take part in the national and State elections
of the spring of 1924. Hitler, who was not a German citizen, was
automatically excluded, and had from the beginning attacked all
parliamentary activity as worthless and dangerous to the independence
of the movement. It was true that such tactics were now essential if the
Party was to follow the path of legality, but Hitler was concerned with
the threat to his personal position as leader of the Party if others were
elected to the Reichstag while he remained outside.

Despite Hitler’s opposition, loudly echoed by Streicher and Esser,
Rosenberg, Strasser and Ludendorff agreed to co-operate with the other
Volkisch)- groups and won a minor triumph at the April and May
elections. The Volkisch bloc became the second largest party in the
Bavarian Parliament, while in the Reichstag elections the combined list
of the National Socialist German Freedom Movement (N.S. Duetsche
Freiheitsbewegung) polled nearly two million votes and captured
thirty-two seats. Among those elected were Strasser, Roehm, Luden-
dorff, Feder and Frick. Ironically, they owed much of their success *to
the impression made by Hitler’s attitude at the Munich trial, but it was
only with great difiiculty that Hitler had been persuaded to agree to the
election campaign at all.

The combination, under cover of which the proscribed Nazi Party
had entered the election campaign, raised another important issue.
Ludendorff and Strasser were anxious to consolidate and extend
the electoral alliance they had concluded with the North German
Deutsch-volkische Freiheitspartei led by Albrecht von Graefe and Graf
Ernst zu Reventlow, with nationalist, racist and anti-Senutic views
similar to those of the Nazis in the south. In August, 1924, a congress of
of all the Volkisch groups was held at Weimar. In Part I of Mein Kampf
(written in the years 1924-1925) Hitler expressed his dislike of such

' A difficult word to translate it combines the idea of Nationalism with those of
race (the Volk) and Anti-Semitism. The Volkisch groups constituted an extremist
wmg of the German Nationahsts of whose middle-class “moderation” they were
often cntical.

Ill

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

alliances. “It is quite erroneous to believe that the strength of a move-
ment must increase if it be combined with other movements of a similar
kind. ... In reality the movement thus admits outside elements which
will subsequently weaken its vigour.”^

There was some truth in this. The traditional animosity of Prussians
and Bavarians; the open hostility of the North Germans to the Roman
Catholic Church (whose stronghold was Bavaria), and the opposition of
the more bourgeois North German nationalists to the radical and
socialist elements in the Nazi programme — ^all these represented factors
which might well weaken the appeal of the Nazis as a Bavarian and
South German party. But the root of Hitler’s objection was his jealous
distrust and fear for his own position. Hitler lacked any ability for
co-operation and compromise. The only relationship he understood was
that of domination. He preferred a party, however small, over which he
could exercise complete and unquestioned control to a combination,
however large, in which power must inevitably be shared and his
own position reduced to that of equality with other leaders. In
Part II of Mein Kampf Hitler returns to the question and devotes
a whole chapter to it under the title: “The Strong are Strongest when
Alone.”

On the very next page Hitler goes out of his way to praise Julius
Streicher, who had magnanimously subordinated his own German
Socialists to the Nazi Party, and contrasts his loyalty with the behaviour
of those “ambitious men who at first had no ideas of their own, but felt
themselves ‘called’ exactly at that moment in which the success of the
N^S.D.A.P. became unquestionable.”’ There were long and sometimes
bitter arguments between Hitler and his visitors at Landsberg on these
issues in 1924. Hitler was both suspicious and evasive. He tried by every
means to delay decisions until he was released, and once again Strexher
and Esser proved their worth to him by founding a rival party, the
Grossdeutschere Volksgemeinschaft, in open opposition to Strasser’s
Vdikisch bloc in Bavaria.

A further cause of disagreement was the S. A. Roehm, although found
guilty of treason, had been discharged on the day sentence was pro-
nounced. He at once set to work to weld together again the disbanded
forces of the Kampf bimd. Ludecke was one of those who agreed to help
Roehm. “Many of the men with whom I conferred,” he says, “were
veritable condoitieri, such as Captain von Heydebreck and Edmund
Heines. Almost without exception they resumed Roehm’s work eagerly,
only too glad to be busy again at the secret military work without which
‘ Mem Kampj, page 293. “ Ibid , page 243.

112

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

they found life wearisome, The Frontbann, as it was now called, grew
rapidly, for Roehm was an able organizer and possessed untiringenergy;
he journeyed from one end of Germany to the other, including Austria
and East Prussia, and soon had some thirty thousand men enrolled.

But the greater Roehm’s success, the more uneasy Hitler became. His
activities threatened Hitler’s chances of leaving prison. The Bavarian
Government arrested some of the subordinate leaders of the Frontbann,
and Hitler’s release on parole, which he had expected six months after
sentence had been passed, on 1 October, 1924, was delayed, “Hitler,
Kriebel and Weber in their cell,” Roehm wrote later, “could not realize
v/hat was at stake. They felt that their approaching freedom was
endangered and laid the blame, not on the enemy, but on the friends
who were fighting for them.”-

Hitler was no less worried by the character Roehm was giving to the
new organization which had replaced and absorbed the old S.A. The
two men had never agreed about the function of the Storratroops. For
Hitler the S.A. had first and last a political function: they were to be
instruments of pohtical intimidation and propaganda subordinate to
the Party. On 15 October, however, Roehm wrote to Ludendorff, as
leader of the Volkisch bloc in the Reichstag:

The political and mihtary movanems are eutuely independent of each
other. ... As the present leader of the mihtary movement I make the
demand that the defence organizations should be given appropriate represen-
tation in the parliamentary group and that they should not be hindered in
their special work. . . . The National Socialist Movement is a fightmg move-
ment. Germany’s freedom — both at home and abroad — ^will neve: h?
secured by talk and negotiations; it must be fought for.''

Hitler flatly disagreed with such a view, just as much as he disliked
the military organization of the Frontbann, its rapid expansion and grow-
ing independence. In December, when new elections for the Reichstag
were held, Roehm did not find a place on the Nazi list.

By the end of Hitler’s year in prison these quarrels and disagreements
had reached such a pitch that it appeared possible to write off the former
Nazi Party as a serious force in German or Bavarian politics. The
Reichstag elections of December, 1924, confirmed this. The votes cast
for the l^&n-Volkisch bloc fell by more than half, from 1,918,300 to
907,300; instead of 32 seats they had only 14 in the new Reichstag, less

^ Ludecke. page 228.

* Roehm: Die Memoiren des Stabsche/s (Saarbriicken, 1934), page 154.

® Ibid , page 156.

113

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

than five per cent of the total. Hitler had already remarked to Hess: “I
shall need five years before the movement is on top again.”

Much of the blame for this state of affairs fell on Hitler — ^with con-
siderable justice. “Hitler,” Ludecke writes, “was the one man with power
to set things straight; yet he never so much as lifted his httle finger or
spoke one word.”^ Roehm, Strasser, Ludendorflf and Rosenberg all
complained in the same exasperated terms. They could never get a firm
answer from him. In disgust Rosenberg threw up the job of deputy
leader of the Party: twenty years later, reflecting on what had happened,
while waiting to be tried by the International Court of Nuremberg, he
wrote: “Hitler deliberately allowed antagonistic groups to exist within
the Party, so that he could play umpire and Fuehrer.”^

Ludecke arrived at the same conclusion: “To suppose that Hitler,
behind prison walls, may have been ignorant of conditions outside is to
be unjust to his political genius. A more reasonable supposition is that
he was deliberately fostering the schism in order to keep the whip-hand
over the party.”-* And he succeeded. The plans for a united Vdlkisch
Front came to nothing. Ludendorff and Roehm left in disgust, and no
powerful Nazi group was created in the Reichstag under the leadership
of someone else. The price of this disunity was heavy, but for Hitler it
was worth paying. By the time he came out of prison the Party had
broken up almost completely — ^but it had not found an alternative
leader, there was no rival to oust. Hitler’s tactics of evasion and “divide
and rule” had worked well.

On 8 May, 1924, and again on 22 September, the Bavarian State
Police submitted a report to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior
recommending Hitler’s deportation. Hitler could stiU be considered an
Austrian citizen and put across the frontier. The second of these reports
stated: “The moment he is set free, Hitler will, because of his energy,
again become the driving force of new and serious public riots and a
menace to the security of the State. Hitler will resume his political
activities, and the hope of the nationalists and racists that he will
succeed in removing the present dissensions among the para-military
troops will be fulfilled.”*

Thanks to the intervention of Giirtner, the Bavarian Minister of
Justice, this threat of deportation was averted. In July Hitler formally

^ Ludecke. page 214.

“ Rosenberg's Memoirs, edited by Serge Lang and Ernst von Scherk (New York,
1949), page 231

® Ludecke. page 222.

* Quoted by R. W. M. Kempner: Blue Print of the Nazi Underground (Research
Studies of the State College of Washington, voi. XIII, No. 2, June, 1945), page 55.

114

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

resigned the leadership of the Party as a gesture of appeasement to the
authorities. The activities of Roehm and the Frontbann temporarily
endangered his release, but the failure of the Nazis in the December
elections probably convinced the Bavarian Government that they had
nothing more to fear from Hitler. On the afternoon of 20 December a
telegram from the Public Prosecutor’s office ordered Hitler’s and
Kriebel’s release on parole. A car from Munich was very soon at the
gate of Landsberg Prison. Hitler, cap in hand and a raincoat belted over
his shorts, paused for his photograph to be taken. An hour or two later
he walked up the stairs of 41,Thierschstrasse to the two rooms he rented
at the top of the house: he was home for Christmas.

Hitler’s return from prison by no means meant the end of the quarrels
and disunity in the Party. On 12 February, 1925, Ludendorff, Strasser
and von Graefe resigned their leadership of the National Sozialistische
Freiheitsbewegung, which was thereupon dissolved. After the fiasco of
the presidential elections later in the spnng the break between Hitler and
Ludendorff became irreparable. In April Roehm demanded a decision
about the future of the Frontbann. The independent terms on which
Roehm proposed co-operation between the political and military leader-
ship were rejected by Hitler in a conversation on 16 April: rather than
agree to these he preferred to let the Frontbann go and build up the S.A.
again from scratch. The following day Roehm wrote to resign the
leadership of both the S.A. and the Frontbann. Hitler sent no reply.
On 30 April Roehm wrote again to Hitler. He ended his letter: “I take
this opportunity, in memory of the fine and difficult hours we have lived
through together, to thank you (Dir) for your comradeship and to beg
you not to exclude me from your personal friendship.”^ But again Roehm
got no reply. The next day a brief notice appeared in the Volkischer
Beobachter announcing Roehm’s resignation of his offices and with-
drawal from politics. With Roehm, Bruckner too left the Party. Earlier
in April Poehner had been killed in a road accident. Goering was still
abroad; Kriebel retired to Cannthia and later went to Shanghai;
Scheubner-Richter and Eckart were dead, Rosenberg offended. Not
many were left with whom to begin the task of rebuilding.

Hitler’s first move on leaving prison had been to consult Poehner, and
on Poehner’s advice he went to call on the Minister-President of

^ Roehm. page 160.

115

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Bavaria and leader of the strongly Catholic and particularist Bavarian
People’s Party, Dr. Heinrich Held. The meeting took place on 4 January,
1925. Despite Hitler’s efforts at conciliation, Dr. Held’s reception was
cold. The putsch, Hitler admitted, had been a mistake; his one object
was to assist the Government in fighting Marxism; he had no use for
Ludendorff’s and the North Germans’ attacks on the Catholic Church,
and he had every intention of respecting the authority of the State.
Held’s attitude was one of scepticism tinged with contempt, but he
agreed — ^with a little prompting from Giirtner, still Minister of Justice,
and Held’s friend as well as Hitler’s — ^to raise the ban on the Party and
its newspaper. “The wild beast is checked,’’ was Held’s comment to
Gurtner. “We can afford to loosen the chain.”^

The fact that Hitler had made his peace with the priest-ridden
Bavarian Government only increased the scorn and hostility of Luden-
dorflf and the North German Vblkisch leaders, Reventlow and Graefe,
who were outspoken in their hostility to the Church. Hitler was unre-
pentant; he even attacked the Volkisch deputies in the Bavarian Parlia-
ment for their failure to accept the offer of a seat in Held’s Cabinet.
When one of the deputies rephed that principles v/ere more important
than securing Hitler’s release. Hitler retorted that his release would have
been a thousand times more valuable for the movement than the
principles of two dozen nationalist deputies.'* This uncompromising
attack lost him the support of most of the Volkisch bloc: only six of the
twenty-four deputies in the Bavarian Landtag remained faithful to him,
the rest broke away and gradually drifted into other parties. However
compliant Hitler showed himself to Held and the Government, inside the
Party he was determined to insist upon unconditional authority and
obedience.

On 26 February, 1925, the Volkischer Beobachter reappeared with a
lengthy editorial from Hitler headed “A New Beginning.” “I do not
consider it to be the task of a political leader,” Hitler wrote, “to attempt
to improve upon, or even to fuse together the human material lying ready
to his hand.”* This was his answer to those who still objected to Streicher
and Esser. He added “a special protest agamst the attempt to bring
religious disputes into the movement or even to equate the movement
with religious disputes. . . . Rehgious reformations cannot be made by
political children, and in the case of these gentlemen it is very rarely that
anything else is in question.”** This was his answer to the North German

^ Otto Strasser. Hitler and I (London, 1940), page 71.

““ Heiden: Hitler, pages 196-7.

’ Heiden: History of National Socialism, pages 97-8.

^ Baynes: vol. I, pages 367-8.

116

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Volkisch movement which put anti-clericalism at the head of its pro-
gramme.

The next day, 27 February, Hitler gathered the few who remained
faithful for a mass meeting in the Burgerbtau Keller. But for the Munich
Carnival he would have held it on 24 February, the fifth anniversary
of the adoption of the Party’s programme. Hitler telephoned to Anton
Drexler asking him to take the chair, but Drexler demanded the ex-
clusion of Esser: Hitler told him to go to the devil, and rang off. In
Drexler’s place. Max Amann conducted the meeting. Strasser, Roehm
and Rosenberg stayed away. Besides Amann, Hitler’s only prominent
supporters were Streicher and Esser, Gottfried Feder and Frick, and
the Bavarian and Thunngian District Leaders, Buttmann and Dintner.

Flitler had not lost his gifts as an orator. When he finished speaking
at the end of two hours there was loud cheering from the four thousand
who filled the hall. He was perfectly frank in his claims.

If anyone comes and wants to impose conditions on me, I shall say to him:
“Just wait, my young friend, and see what conditions I impose on you. I am
not contending for the favour of the masses. At the end of a year you shall
judge, my comrades. If I have acted rightly, well and good. If I have acted
wrongly, I shall resign my office into your hands. Until then, however, I
alone lead the movement, and no one can impose conditions on me so long
as I personally bear the responsibility. And I once more bear the whole
responsibility for everything that occurs m the movement. ... To this
struggle of ours there are only two possible issues: either the enemy pass
over our bodies or we pass over theirs, and it is my desire that, if in the
struggle I should fall, the Swastika banner shall be my winding sheet.’’^

In the glow of enthusiasm a reconciliation was effected. The leadejs
shook hands on the platform. Streicher spoke of Hitler’s release as a
gift from God. Buttmann declared: “All my scruples vanished when the
Fuehrer spoke.”

With the re-founding of the Nazi Party in February, 1925, Hitler set
himself two objectives. The first was to establish his own absolute control
over the Party by driving out those who were not prepared to accept his
leadership without question. The second was to build up the Party and
make it a force in German politics within the framework of the con-
stitution. Ludecke reports a conversation with Hitler while he was
still in Landsberg prison in which he said; “When I resume active work
it will be necessary to pursue a new policy. Instead of working to achieve
power by an armed coup, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the

^Heiden: Hitler, page 198, and R. T. Clark, The Fall of the German Republic
(London, 1935), page 190.

117

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If out-voting them
takes longer than out-shooting them, at least the result will be guaran-
teed by their own Constitution. Any lawful process is slow. . . . Sooner
or later we shall have a majority — and after that, Germany.”^

The process was to prove even slower than Hitler had expected. Not
only had he to begin at the beginning again, but the times were no
longer so favourable as they had been in 1920-1923. Hitler’s speech on
27 February had been too successful, the display of his demagogic power
too convincing. He had laid great stress on the need to concentrate
opposition against a single enemy — Marxism and the Jew. But he had
added, in an aside which delighted his audience : “If necessary, by one
enemy many can be meant.” In other words, under cover of fighting
Marxism and the Jew, the old fight against the State would be resumed.
Such phrases as; “Either the enemy will pass over our bodies or we over
theirs,” scarcely suggested that Hitler’s new policy of legality was very
sincere. The authorities were alarmed and immediately afterwards
prohibited him from speaking in public in Bavaria. This prohibition was
soon extended to other German states as well. It lasted until May, 1927,
in Bavaria and September, 1928, and was a severe handicap for a
leader whose greatest asset was his ability as a speaker. Hitler, however,
had no option but to obey. He was on parole for some time after leaving
prison and he was anxious lest the Bavarian authorities might proceed
With the threat to deport him. An interesting correspondence on the
question of Hitler’s citizenship between Hitler’s lawyer, the Austrian
Consul-General in Munich, and the Vienna authorities, is to be found
19 . the Austrian police records. It illustrates the anxiety Hitler felt on this
score in the mid- 1920s.

An even more serious handicap was the improvement in the position
of the country, which began while Hitler was in prison and had already
been reflected in the reduced Nazi vote at the elections of December,
1924. Three days after the unsuccessful putsch, on 12 November, 1923,
Dr. Schacht had been appointed as special commissioner to restore the
German currency; by the summer of 1924 he had succeeded and the
inflation was at an end. At the end of February, 1924, the threat to the
stability of the Republic from either the extreme Left or the extreme
Right had been mastered and the state of martial law ended. Strese-
mann’s hopes of a settlement with the allied Powers had not proved
vain. A new reparations agreement— the Dawes Plan— was negotiated,
and this was followed in turn by the evacuation of the Ruhr; the Locarno
^ Ludecke’ pages 217-8.

118

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Pact, guaranteeing the inviolability of the Franco-German and Belgian-
German frontiers: the withdrawal of allied troops from the first zone of
the demilitarized Rhineland, and Germany’s entry into the League of
Nations by unanimous vote of the League Assembly on 8 September,
1926. At each stage the Republican Government had had to meet with
violent opposition from both the political extremes, from the Com-
munists and from the Nationalists. The fact that on each occasion it had
been able to carry its proposals through the Reichstag, and that in
December, 1924, the Social Democrat Party increased its vote by thirty
per cent on a platform of the defence of the Republic, suggested that at
last the period of disturbance which had lasted from 1918 to the begin-
ning of 1924 was at an end.

The presidential elections in the spring of 1925 appeared to mark a
turning-point in the history of the Weimar Republic. President Ebert,
the former Social Democratic Chancellor, who had held office since the
Republic’s foundation, died on 28 February, 1925. In the election held
at the end of March the Nazis put up Ludendorff as their candidate, but
won no more than 211,000 votes out of a total of close on 27 millions.
As none of the candidates obtained a clear majority, a second election
was held in April. This time the Nazis abandoned Ludendorff (this was
the cause of the final breach between Hitler and Ludendorff) and
supported Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who had been brought in at
the last minute by the Nationahsts. Hindenburg won by a narrow margin
to the anger and dismay of the democratic and republican forces. But
the Nazis had little cause for congratulation. For the election of
Hindenburg, the greatest figure of the old Army, a devoted Monarchist,
a Conservative and a Nationalist, had the paradoxical effect, in the»
short run, of strengthening the Repubhc The simple fact that Hinden-
burg was at the head of the State did more than anything else could have
done to reconcile traditionally minded and conservative Germans to
the Republican regime. At the same time his scrupulous respect for the
democratic constitution during the first five years of his Presidency cut
the ground away from under the feet of those who attacked the Republic
as the betrayal of the national cause.

Hitler’s emphasis on legality was an attempt to adjust the party’s
policy to the changed situation in Germany. Legality was a matter of
tactics; the ineradicable hostility towards the Republic and all its works,
the purpose of overthrowing it, even if by legal means, remained
unchanged. In these calmer and more prosperous days, however, Hitler’s
appeal to hatred, his tirades against “intolerable burdens” and his

119

PARTY LEADER, 1889-i9J3

prophecies of disaster found less and less response outside the ranks of
the converted.

Money, too, was more difficult to find. Until 1929 Hitler had little
success m his efforts to tap the political funds of heavy industry and big
business. The principal sources of Party revenue remained the members’
dues of a mark a month (of which only ten per cent was forwarded to
Party headquarters), collections or charges for admission at meetings,
such private subscriptions as they could secure and the meagre income
from the Party newspapers and publishing house in the hands of Max
Amenn.

One of Hitler’s personal sources of income was writing and selling
leading articles to the Party Press. What else he received from the
Party’s funds is unknown, but he certainly did not live in poverty.
It was at this time, in the summer of 1925, that he rented Haus
Wachenfeld, a villa which had been built by a Hamburg merchant
before the war on the Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden. Here, a
hundred miles from Munich, Hitler made his home m the magnificent
mountain scenery of the Bavarian Alps, close to the Austrian frontier.
He persuaded his widowed half-sister, Angela Raubal, to come from
Vienna to keep house for him, bringing her pretty seventeen-year-old
daughter Geh with her. Debarred from speaking in pubhc in Bavaria,
he spent little time now in Munich, only coming occasionally for a
conference at the Volkischer Beobachter office in the Schellingstrasse.
Up at Berchtesgaden he was busy dictating articles and the rest of Mein
Kampf to Hess or his niece, Geli. The first volume of Mein Kampf was
published in the summer of 1925. The style had been pruned and parts
%f it rewritten by a Father Bernhard Stempfle, who belonged to the
Hieronymite Order and edited a small anti-Semitic paper at Miesbach.
Four hundred pages long, and costing the high price of twelve marks,
the book was no great success. Hitler, however, at once set to work on
the second part.

Ill

Such success as the Nazis had at this time was due less to Hitler than to
Gregor Strasser, who was threatening to take Hitler’s place as the
effective leader of the Party and was breahng new grotmd in the north
of Germany and the Rhineland, where the Party had hitherto failed to
penetrate. Gregor Strasser joined the Nazis at the end of 1920 and
became the local leader in Lower Bavaria. A Bavarian by birth, and some

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

three years younger than Hitler, he had won the Iron Cross, First Class,
in the war and ended his service as a lieutenant. After the war he had
married and opened a chemist’s shop in Landshut. A powerfully built
man with a strong personality, Strasser was an able speaker and an
enthusiast of radical views who laid as much stress on the anti-capitalist
points in the Nazi programme as on its nationalism. While Hitler was
in prison Strasser had been one of the promoters of the attempt to create
a united front with the North German Vdlkisch movement. A man of
independent views, he was critical of Hitler’s attitude and little disposed
to submit to his demands for unlimited authority in the Party. Strasser
had not attended the meeting on 27 February, and it was only a fortnight
later that Hitler persuaded him to resume work in the Party by offering
him the leadership in North Germany.

This suited Strasser very well, and with the help of his brother, Otto
Strasser, he rapidly built up a following in the north and an organization
which, while nominally acknowledging Hitler as leader, soon began to
develop into a separate party. Gregor Strasser, who was a Reichstag
deputy with a free pass on the railways and no ban to prevent him
speaking in public, spent days and nights in the train, speaking several
times in the week at one big town after another m the Rhineland,
Hanover, Saxony and Prussia. He founded a newspaper, the Berliner
Arbeitszeitmg, edited by Otto Strasser, and a fortnightly periodical,
Nationalsozialistische Briefe, intended for Party officials. Strasser was
particularly active in strengthening the organization of the movement,
appointing district leaders and frequently coming down to talk with
them. As editor of the Bnefe and Gregor’s private secretary, thg
Strassers secured a young Rhinelander, then still under thirty, a man of
some education who had attended a number of universities, and written
novels and film scripts which no one would accept, before taking a job
as secretary to a Reichstag deputy. His name was Paul Josef Goebbels,
and he soon showed himself to possess considerable talent as a journa-
list and as a speaker.

The Strasser brothers did not share Hitler’s cynical disregard for any
programme except as a means to power. Their own programme was
vague enough, but it proposed the nationalization of heavy industry and
the big estates in the interests of what they called “State feudalism,”
together with the decentralization of political power on a federal basis,
the break-up of Prussia and the establishment of a chamber of corpora-
tions on Fascist lines to replace the Reichstag. Hitler had little sympathy
with these ideas, least of all with the Strassers’ anti-capitalism and their
demand for the breaking up of big estates, which embarrassed him in

121

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

his search for backers among the industrialists and landowners. But
while Hitler spent his time in Berchtesgaden, Gregor and Otto Strasser
were actively at work extending their influence in the movement.

On 22 November, 1925, the Strassers called together a meeting of the
North German district leaders in Hanover. Among the twenty-five
present were Karl Kaufmann, from the Ruhr, subsequently Gauleiter
of Hamburg; Bernhard Rust, later the Nazi Minister of Education;
Kerri, later Nazi Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs; Robert Ley, from
Cologne, in time the boss of Hitler’s Labour Front; Friedrich Hilde-
brandt, after 1933 the Gauleiter of Mecklenburg, and Erich Koch, who
became not only Gauleiter of East Prussia but after 1941 Reichskom-
nussar for the Ukraine. Hitler was represented by Gottfried Feder, but
It was only by a bare majority that Feder was admitted to the meeting
at all, after Goebbels had demanded his ejection.

The spilt between the Strassers and Hitler crystallized round a
question which excited much feeling in Germany in 1925-1926, whether
the former German royal houses should be expropriated and whether
their possessions should be regarded as their own private property or as
the public property of the different states. On this issue Gregor and
Otto Strasser sided with working-class opinion against the princes, while
Hitler supported the propertied classes. At this time he was receiving
fifteen hundred marks a month (three-quarters of his income) from the
divorced Duchess of Sachsen-Anhalt, and he denounced the agitation as
a Jewish swindle. The Hanover meeting voted to follow the Strasser
^ine, only Ley and Feder supporting Hitler. When Feder protested in
Hitler’s name, Goebbels jumped to his feet: “In these circumstances I
demand that the petty bourgeois Adolf Hitler be expelled from the
National Socialist Party.” Rust added: “The National Socialists are
free and democratic men. They have no pope who can claim infalli-
bility.”^ More important still, the Hanover meeting accepted the
Strassers’ programme and resolved to substitute it for the Twenty-five
Points of the official programme adopted in February, 1920. This was
open revolt.

Hitler took time to meet the challenge, but when he did move he
showed his skill m the way he outmanoeuvred Strasser without splitting
the Party. On 14 February, 1926, he summoned a conference in his turn,
this time in the South German town of Bamberg. Hitler deliberately
avoided a Sunday, when the North German leaders would have been
free to attend in strength. As a result the Strasser wing of the Party was
^ Strasser: Hitler and 1, page 97.

122

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

represented only by Gregor Strasser and Goebbels. In the south Hitler
had made the position of District Leader (Gauleiter) a salaried office, a
step which left the gauleiters free to attend solely to Party business and
made them much more dependent upon himself. He could thus be sure
of a comfortable majority in the meeting at Bamberg.

The two protagonists fought out their differences in a day-long debate
which ranged over half a score of topics. Socialism, the plebiscite on the
Princes’ property, the policy of legality versus that of revolution, foreign
affairs, the role of the working classes and the organization of the
Party. Strasser was outnumbered from the beginning, and Hitler
added to his triumph by the capture of Goebbels, hitherto one of the
Strassers’ strongest supporters. Halfway through the meeting Goebbels
stood up and declared that, after listening to Hitler, he was convinced
that Strasser and he had been wrong, and that the only course was to
admit their mistake and come over to Hitler. Having won his point.
Hitler did all he could to keep Strasser in the Party. In the middle of the
debate he put his arm round his shoulders and said: “Listen, Strasser,
you really mustn’t go on living like a wretched official. Sell your phar-
macy, draw on the Party funds and set yourself up properly as a man of
your worth should.’’^ Hitler’s conciliatory tactics proved successful.
The Strasser programme was abandoned, a truce patched up and the
unity of the Party preserved. This was not the end of the Strasser episode,
but Hitler had handled his most dangerous rival with skill and papered
over the breach between himself and the radical wing of the Party.

Hitler had still to face other difficulties in the Party. There was per^;^
sistent criticism and grumbling at the amount of money the Leader and
his friends took out of Party funds for their own expenses, and at the
time he spent away from headquarters in Berchtesgaden or driving
around the countryside with his niece, the blonde Geli, in a large motor-
car at the Party’s expense. An angry controversy started between
Hitler and Gauleiter Munder of Wurttemberg which led to Munder’s
eventual dismissal m 1928. Quarrelling, slander and intrigue over the
most petty and squalid issues seemed to be endemic in the Party.

To keep these quarrels within bounds. Hitler set up a Party court in
1926, the Uschia, an abbreviated form of Uniersuchungs- und Schlich-
tmgs-Ausschuss (Committee for Investigation and Settlement). Its
original chairman, the former General Heinemann, failed to understand
that its primary purpose was to preserve Party discipline and the
authority of the leader, turning a blind eye to dishonesty, crime and
* Strasser; Hitler and I, pages 100-1.

123

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

immorality, except in so far as these affected the efficiency and unity of
the Party. His successor. Major Walther Buch, understood his Job better,
and with the assistance of Ulrich Graf and a young Munich lawyer,
Hans Frank (later Governor-General of Poland), turned the Uschla
into an effective instrument for Hitler’s tighter control over the Party.

In May, 1926, Hitler summoned the Munich members of the Party
to a meeting which was a logical consequence of the Bamberg conference
of February. At this meeting a resolution was passed to the effect that
henceforward the sole “bearer” of the movement was the National
Socialist German Workers’ Association in Munich. The Munich group
was to choose its own leadership, which would automatically become
the leadership of the whole Party. Hitler explained that, although
German law required the formal election of the chairman by the
members, once elected he would have the right to appoint or dismiss
the other Party leaders, including the gauleiters, at his pleasure. At the
same time the Twenty-five Points of the programme adopted in
February, 1920, were declared to be immutable, not because Hitler
attached any importance to them, but as a further prop to his authority
over the Party.

In July, 1926, Hitler felt strong enough to hold a mass rally of the
Party at Weimar, in Thuringia, one of the few States in which he was
still allowed to speak. Five thousand men took part in the march past,
with Hitler standing in his car and returning their salute, for the first time,
with outstretched arm. Hoffman’s photographs made it all look highly
impressive, and a hundred thousand copies of the Volkischer Beobachter
yvere distributed throughout the country. It was the first of the Reichs-
parteitage later to be staged, year after year, at Nuremberg.

Goebbels was now wholeheartedly Hitler’s man. In November
Hitler appointed him as gauleiter of “Red” Berlin, an assignment which
was to stretch to the full his remarkable powers as an agitator. He took
over a Party organization so riven with faction that Hitler had to
dissolve it, and ordered Goebbels to begin again from the bottom. By
moving Goebbels to Berlin Hitler not only strengthened the movement
in a key position, but provided another check against the independence
of the Strasser group. The Strasser brothers had kept their own press
and publishing house in Berlin, and Goebbels, whose desertion to Hitler
was regarded as rank treachery by the Strassers, employed every means
in his power to reduce their influence and following. In 1927 he founded
Der Angrijf as a rival to the Strassers’ paper, and used the S.A. to beat
up their most loyal supporters. Appeals to Hitler by Gregor and Otto
Strasser produced no effect: he declared he had no control over what
124

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Goebbels did. None the less it was Hitler’s game that Goebbels was
playing for him.

For the next two years the fortunes of Hitler and the Nazi Party changed
very little. The old trouble with the S.A. reappeared. In November,
1926, Hitler reformed the S.A. and found a new commander in Captain
Pfeifer von Salomon, but the ex-officers still thought only in military
terms. The S.A. was to be a training ground for the Army and the
height of their ambition was to hand it over lock, stock and barrel to
the Army, with jobs for themselves m the higher ranks. Both the Beilin
and Munich S.A. leadership had to be purged. The Munich S.A. had
become notorious for the homosexual habits of Lieutenant Edmund
Heines and his friends: it was not for his morals, however, or his
record as a murderer, that Hitler threw him out in May, 1927, but for
his lack of discipline and insubordination. Such was the elite of the new
Germany.

Whatever steps Hitler took, howevei, the S.A. continued to follo\/
its own independent course. Pfeffer held as obstinately as Roehm to the
view that the military leadership should be on equal terms with, not
subordinate to, the political leadership. He refused to admit Hitler’s
right to give orders to his Stormtroops. So long as the S.A. was re-
cruited from the ex-service and ex-Freikorps men who had so far pro-
vided both its officers and rank and file, Hitler had to tolerate this state
of affairs. These men were not interested in politics; what they lived for
was precisely this “playing at soldiers” Hitler condemned — going on
manoeuvres, marching in uniform, brawling, sitting up half the night
singing camp songs and drinking themselves into a stupor, trying
to recapture the lost comradeship and exhilaration of 1914-1918. In
time Hitler was to find an answer in the black-shirted S.S., a hand-
picked corps d' elite (sworn to absolute obedience i very different from the
ill-disciplined S.A. mob of camp followers. But it was not until 1929
that Hitler found the right man in Heinrich Himmler, who had been
Gregor Strasser’s adjutant at Landshut and later his secretary. In 1928
Himmler, who had been trained as an agriculturalist, was running a
small poultry farm at the village of Waldtrudering, near Munich. When
he took over the S.S. from Erhard Heiden the troop numbered no more
than two hundred men, and it took Himmler some years before he
could provide Hitler with what he wanted, an instrument of complete

125

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

reliability with which to exercise his dominatioa over the Party aad
eventually over the German nation.

Yet, if the Party still fell far short of Hitler’s monolothic ideal, 1927
and 1928 saw a continuation of that slow growth in numbers and
activity which had begun in 1926. In May, 1927, after giving further
assurances for his good behaviour. Hitler was again allowed to speak m
Bavaria, and in September, 1928, in Prussia. In August, 1927, at the
first of the Nuremberg Party Days, thirty thousand S A. men are said
to have paraded before the Party Leader. From seventeen thousand in
1926 the Party membership rose to forty thousand m 1927 and sixty
thousand at the end of 1928. To the Hitler Youth were added the Nazi
Schoolchildren’s League {Schulerbund) and Students’ League; the Order
of German Women; a Nazi Teachers’ Association and unions of Nazi
Lawyers and Nazi Physicians. The circulation of the Volkischer Beo-
bachter crept up and the Illustnerter Beobachter was turned into a
weekly.

By 1928 the Party organization was divided into two mam branches:
one directed by Gregor Strasser and devoted to attacking the existing
r..gime, the other directed by Constantin Hierl and concerned with
building up in advance the cadres of the new State. The first section had
three divisions : foreign (Nieland), Press (Otto Dietrich), infiltration and
the building up of party cells (Schumann). The second section consisted
of Walther Darre (Agriculture), Wagener (Economics), Konopath (Race
and Culture), Nicolai (work of the Ministry of the Interior), Hans
Frank (Legal questions) Gottfried Feder (Technical questions), and
Schulz (Labour Service).

Propaganda was a separate department, the director of which worked
directly under Hitler. From October, 1925, to January, 1927, this had
been Gregor Strasser’s job, but Hitler had then transferred Strasser to
build up the organization, and in November, 1928, put in Goebbels as
his propaganda chief. At the end of 1927 another familiar figure,
Hermann Goering, returned to Germany from Sweden. Goermg
established himself in Berlin, living by his wits and his social con-
nections. Hitler, looking for just such contacts in upper-class Berlin,
soon renewed his association with Goering. In May, 1928, as their re-
ward Goering and Goebbels were both elected to the Reichstag on the
short Nazi list of twelve deputies, together with Strasser, Frick and
General von Epp, who had resigned from the Army to rejoin the Party.
Hitler himself never stood as a candidate for the Reichstag. Since he was
not a German citizen he was ineligible. He did not become naturalized
until 1932, on the eve of his candidature for the German Presidency,
126

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

when the Nazis had secured control of the State Government in Bruns-
wick and were in a position to make the change without awkward
questions being asked.

But the fact which overshadowed all Hitler’s efforts in these years and
dwarfed them into insignificance was the continued success of the
Republican regime. By 1927 the despised Government of the “November
criminals,” the Jew-ridden “Republic of Betrayal,” had succeeded in
restoring order, stabilizing the currency, negotiating a settlement of
reparations, ending the occupation of the Ruhr and securing Germany’s
entry into the League of Nations. To the Locarno Pact in the west
Stresemann had added the settlement with the Soviet Union embodied
in the Treaty of Berlin of April, 1926, and to the evacuation of the First
Zone of the demilitarized Rhineland the withdrawal of the Allied
Military Control Commission at the end of January, 1927. In August,
1928, at the invitation of the French Government, Stresemann visited
Pans to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war, on equal terms
with the other Great Powers. The visit to Pans and the friendliness of
Stresemann’s reception symbolized the progress Germany had made,
through the policy of “Fulfilment,” in recovering that equality of rights
to which Hitler and the Nationalists never tired of appealing.

These successes in the political field, which, it might be argued,
affected only that part of the nation which interested itself in politics,
were matched by an economic recovery which touched every man and
woman in the country. The basis of this recovery was the huge amount
of foreign money lent to Germany, especially by American investors,
after the Dawes Plan and the re-establishment of the currency seemed to *
have made her a sound financial risk again. The official estimate of
Germany’s foreign debts at the end of 1930 was between 28,500 and
30,000 million gold marks, almost all of which had been borrowed
between the beginning of 1924 and the beginning of 1929.^

Not only the German Government, but the States, the big cities, even
the Churches, as well as industry and business, borrowed at high rates
and short notice, spending extravagantly without much thought of how
the loans were to be repaid except by borrowing more. In this way
Germany made her reparation payments promptly, and at the same time
financed the rationalization and re-equipment of her industry, great
increases in social services of all kinds and a steady rise in the standard
of living of all classes. During the inflation (1923) German industrial
production had dropped to fifty-five per cent of the 1913 figure, but by

^ C. S. R. Hams: Germany s Foreign Indebtedness (Oxford, 1935), chapter I.

127

PARTY leader, 1889-1933

1927 it had recovered to a hundred and twenty-two per cent, a recovery
which far outdistanced that of the United Kingdom.^ Unemployment
feU to six hundred and fifty thousand in the summer of 1928. In this
same year retail sales showed an increase of twenty per cent over 1925
figures, while by next year, 1929, money wages had risen by eighteen
per cent and real wages by ten per cent over the average for 1925.'^

Against facts hke these, translated into the simplest tenns of more
food, more money, more jobs, and more security, ail Hitler’s and Goeb-
beis’ skill as agitators made little headway. Hitler’s instinct was right.
The foundations of this sudden prosperity were exceedingly shaky, and
Hitlers’ prophecies of disaster, although he was wrong in predicting a
new inflation, were to be proved right. But, in 1927 and 1928, few in
Germany wanted to listen to such gloomy threats, any more than they
listened to the warnings of the President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Schacht,
or of the Agent-General for Reparations, Parker Gilbert.

The general mood of confidence and the sense of recovery after the
fevers and exhaustion of the post-war years were reflected in the results
of the Reichstag elections held in May, 1928. The Social Democrats,
the party most closely identified with the Republic, increased their vote
from 7.88 to 9.15 millions, while the Right-wing German National Party
who had been unwavering in their vilification of the Weimar rdgime,
saw their support drop from 6.2 to 4.3 milUon votes. The Nazis polled
only 810,000 votes and secured no more than twelve seats out of a total
of 491, ranking as the ninth party in the Chamber.

Thus although Hitler had certainly made some progress in rebuilding
'the Party when judged by the level to which it had fallen in 1924-1925, as
soon as it was measured against the standards of national politics his
success was seen to be negligible. At the end of 1928 Hitler was still a
small-time politician, little known outside the south and even there
regarded as part of the lunatic-fringe of Bavarian politics. These were the
years of v/aiting, years in which Hitler had to face the worst of all
situations, indifference and half-amused contempt, years in which it
would have been all too easy for the movement to disintegrate and
founder.

In September, 1928, Hitler called a meeting of the Party leaders in
Munich and talked to them frankly. Much of his speech was taken up
with attempting to belittle Stresemann’s achievement in foreign policy.

' W. Arthur Lewis; Economic Survey, 1919-1929 (London, 1949), page 91.

^ Hams: Appendix IV, quoting the Report of the Agent-General for Reparations,
21 May, 1930.

128

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

In the first place our people must be delivered from the hopeless confusion of
international convictions and educated consciously and systematically to
fanatical Nationalism. . . . Second, in so far as we educate the people to
fight against the delirium of demociacy and bring it again to the recognition
of the necessity of authority and leadership, we tear it away from the
nonsense of parliamentarianism. Third, in so far as we deliver the people
from the atmosphere of pitiable belief in possibilities which lie outside the
bounds of one’s own strength— such as the belief in reconciliation, under-
standing, world peace, the League of Nations, and international solidarity—
we destroy these ideas. There is only one right m the world and that right
IS one’s own strength.^

But he did not disguise the difficulties which lay ahead. Above all,
they had to stengthen the individual Party comrade’s confidence in the
victory of the movement. “It does not require much courage to do
silent service m an existing organization. It requires more courage to
fight against an existing political regime. . . . Attack attracts the person-
alities which possess more courage. Thus a condition containing danger
within itself becomes a magnet for men who seek danger. . . . What
remains is a minority of determined, hard men. It is this process which
alone makes history explicable: the fact that certain revolutions, eman-
ating from very few men and giving the world a new face, have actually
taken place. ... All parties, public opinion, take a position against us.
But therein lies the unconditional, I might say the mathematical, reason
for the future success of our movement. As long as we are the radical
movement, as long as public opinion shuns us, as long as the existing
factors of the State oppose us — ^we shall continue to assemble the most
valuable human material around us, even at times when as they say, all
factors of human reason argue against it.”-
It was with such arguments that Hitler held the men around him to-
gether. This is the one striking quality of his leadership in these years,
the fact that he never let go, never lost faith in himself and was able to
communicate this, to keep the faith of others alive, in the belief that
some time a crack would come and the tide at last begin to flow in his
favour.

Hitler’s first chance came in 1929, a prelude to the great crisis of 1930-
1933, and it came in the direction Hitler had foreseen, that of foreign
policy.

^ Prange pages 39-40, quoting from the Volkischer Beobachter of 23 September,
1928

^ Heiden: Der Fuehrer, page 250.

L.H —

129

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Although Streseraann’s policy had brought solid gains for Germany,
nothing would appease the German National Party which continued to
attack every item of the Versailles and subsequent settlements. The
difficulties of Stresemann’s position made him peculiarly vulnerable.
Any concession to be secured from a grudging and suspicious France
required much patience and circumspection: the policy of “Fulfilment”
could not be hurried. In these circumstances it was the easiest thing in
the world for the Nationalists and Nazis to whip up German impatience
and decry any success as insufficient and less than Germany was
entitled to, attacldng the Government for truckling to France and
sacrificing national interests. Every outburst of this kind added to
Stresemann’s difficulties— and was meant to do so — ^by raising French
resistance and casting doubts on his ability to speak for, or control,
pubUc opinion in Germany.

Hitler had been unwearying in his attacks on Stresemann. The very
idea of reconciliation, of settlement by agreement, roused his anger.
An appeal to nationalist resentment was an essential part of Hitler’s
stock-in-trade; at all costs that resentment must be kept alive and
inflamed. France must be represented as the eternal enemy, and Strese-
mann’s policy of “Fulfilment” as blind illusion or, better still, deliberate
treachery. So far this attack from the Right had failed to destroy the
support of the majority for Stresemann’s policy, but a better chance of
success appeared to offer itself in 1929, and although in the end this, too,
failed, the way in which the campaign was organized and the part Hitler
was able to secure in it for himself marked a decisive stage in the rise of
jhe Nazi Party.

The occasion was the renewal of negotiations for a final settlement of
reparations. The Dawes Plan of 1924 had not attempted to fix the final
amount to be paid by Germany or the number of years for which
Germany was to continue to pay. In the winter of 1928-1929 these
questions were submitted to a committee of experts under the chairman-
ship of the American banker, Owen D. Young. After lengthy negoti-
ations the Young Committee signed a report on 7 June, 1929, which
required the Germans to pay reparations for a further fifty-nine years.
The annual payments were fixed on a graded scale, the average of which
was considerably lower than the sum already being paid under the Dawes
Plan (2,050 million marks a year as against 2,500 million). The total
was substantially less than the 132 milliard gold marks originally claimed
by the Allies, while the international controls over Germany’s economy
established by the Dawes Plan were to be abohshed. Whatever doubts
he may have entertained, Stresemann proposed to accept these terms,

130

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

although they were far stiffer than those contained in the German
proposals to the Committee, in the hope that thereby he could secure
evacuation of the remaining zones of the Occupied Rhineland. In the
international conference which met at the Hague in August, 1929, he
succeeded in linking the two questions of reparations and evacuation,
and in persuading the French to agree that the withdrawal of the occupy-
ing forces should begin in September, five years ahead of time, and be
completed by the end of June, 1930.

This was the last of Stresemann’s triumphs. He died on 3 October,
1929, worn out by the exertions of the past six years. Before he died he
had overcome the opposition of the French, but the Germans still
remained to be convinced. On 9 July, 1929, a national committee had
been formed to organize a campaign for a plebiscite rejecting the new
reparations settlement and the “lie” of Germany’s war-guilt which
represented the legal basis of the Allies’ claims. From then until 13
March, 1930, when President Hindenburg finally signed the legislation
in which the Young Plan was embodied, the Press and parties of the
German Right united in a most violent campaign to defeat the Govern-
ment and to use the issues of foreign policy and reparations for their
ultimate purpose of overthrowing, or at least damaging, the hated
Republic. It was by means of this campaign that Hitler first made his
appearance on the national stage of German politics.

The leader of the agitation was Alfred Hugenberg, a bigoted German
nationalist whose aim was to tear up the Versailles Treaty, overthrow
the Republic and smash the orgamzed working-class movement. Aa
ambitious, domineering and unscrupulous man of sixty-three, Hugen-
berg had large resources at his disposal. At one time a director of
Krupps, he made a fortune out of the inflation and with it bought up a
propaganda empire, a whole network of newspapers and news agencies,
as well as a controlling interest in the big UFA film trust. These he
used not so much to make money as to push his own views. In 1928 he
took over the leadership of the German National Party and by his
extravagant opposition in the next two years caused a secession of
more moderate members.

Hugenberg could count on the support of the Stahlhelm, by far the
largest of the German ex-servicemen’s organizations, under the leader-
ship of Franz Seldte; of the Pan-German League, whose chairman,
Heinrich Class, joined Hugenberg’s Committee for the Initiative; and
of powerful industrial and financial interests, represented by Dr. Albert
Voegler, General Director of the big United Steel {Vereinigte Stahl-

131

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

werke), and later by the President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Hjalmar
Schacht, the two chief German delegates to the Young Committee,
both of whom came out violently against the Plan. What they lacked was
mass support, someone to go out and rouse the mob. Through Finanzrat
Bang, Hitler and Hugenberg were brought together and met at the
Deutscher Orden, a nationalist club in Berlin. Hitler was not easily
persuaded to come in, partly because of the opposition to such an
alliance with the reactionary Hugenberg and the representatives of
industry which he could expect to meet from the radical Strasser group.
But the advantages of being able to draw on the big political funds at
the disposal of Hugenberg, and the offer of an equal position with the
National Party m launching the agitation, converted him. He put his
price high: complete independence in waging the campaign in his own
way, and a large share of the Committee’s resources to enable him to
do it.^ For his representative on the Joint Finance Committee Hitler
deliberately chose Gregor Strasser: when others in the Party complained,
he laughed and told them to wait until he had finished with his allies.

In September, 1929, Hugenberg and Hitler published a draft “Law
against the Enslavement of the German People.” After repudiating
Germany’s responsibility for the war. Section III demanded the end of all
reparations and Section IV the punishment of the Chancellor, the
Cabinet and their representatives for high treason if they agreed to new
financial commitments. For their bill to be submitted to the Reichstag
the sponsors had to secure the support of ten per cent of the electorate;
the lists were opened on 16 October and they got the votes of 10 02 per
cent, not many over four millions. After all the violent propaganda
about turning Germany into a “Young colony,” crippling national
survival for two generations, and enslaving the nation to foreign capital-
ists, this was a sharp failure. The Committee had even less success m
the Reichstag when the Bill was introduced at the end of November and
defeated clause by clause, one group of the German National Party
under Treviranus refusing to vote for the controversial Section IV and
breaking away from Hugenberg. The submission of the motion to a
national plebiscite at the end of December, the final stage in the process,
underlined the defeat of the extremists. To win, Hugenberg and Hitler
needed more than twenty-one million votes; they got less than six
million. The bills embodying the legislation for carrying out the Young

^ Fritz Thyssen wrote later that he first financed the National Socialist Party for a
single reason: because he wanted to defeat the Young Plan. Cf. Thyssen: / Paid
Hitler, page 118.

132

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Plan were passed by the Reichstag on 12 March, 1930. The last hope of
the Nationalists was that President Hindenburg would refuse to sign
them, and pressure was exerted on him by his Nationalist friends. But
Hindenburg refused to be diverted from his constitutional duty, and on
13 March put his signature to the Young Plan laws. The fury of the
Hugenberg and Nazi Press, and their open attacks on the President
(“Is Hindenburg still alive?” Goebbels sneered in Der Angriff) revealed
the bitterness of their defeat.

But the defeat for Hugenberg and his “Freedom Law” was no defeat
for Hitler. In the preceding six months he had succeeded for the first
time in breaking into national politics and showing something of his
ability as a propagandist. Every speech made by Hitler and the other
Nazi leaders had been carried with great prominence by the Hugenberg
chain of papers and news agencies. To millions of Germans who had
scarcely ever heard of him before Hitler had now become a familiar
figure, thanks to a publicity campaign entirely paid for by Hugenberg’s
rival party. More important still, he had attracted the attention of those
who controlled the political funds of heavy industry and big business
to his remarkable gifts as an agitator. This, in Hitler’s eyes, far out-
weighed the defeat.

Already, through the agency of Otto Dietrich, Hitler had been brought
into touch with Emil Kirdorf. Otto Dietrich, who was soon to become
Hitler’s Press Chief, was the son-in-law of Reismann-Grone of Essen,
the owner of the Rheinisch-Westfdlische Zeitung (the paper of the Ruhr
industrialists), and political adviser to the Mining Union {BergbauHcher
Verein). Kirdorf was one of the biggest names in German industry, the
chief shareholder of the Gelsenkirchen Mine Company, the founder of
the Ruhr Coal Syndicate and the man who controlled the political funds
of the Mining Union and the North-west Iron Association, the so-called
Ruhr Treasury (Ruhrschatz). At the Nuremberg Party Day of August,
1929, Kirdorf was a guest of honour and was so impressed by the sixty
thousand National Socialists who assembled to cheer their leader that
he wrote afterwards to Hitler: “My wife and I shall never forget how
overwhelmed we were in attending the memorial celebration for the
World War dead.”^ From now on Hitler could count upon increasing
interest and support from at least some of those who, like Kirdorf, had
money to invest in nationalist, anti-democratic and anti-working-class
politics.

With this money Hitler began to put the Party on a new footing.
He took over the Barlow Palace, an old mansion on the Briennerstrasse
‘ Heiden: Der Fuehrer, page 271.

133

rAKix i^CAUJtiK, ioo::?-i5^^j

in Munich, and had it remodelled as the Brown House. A grand staircase
led up to a conference chamber, furnished in red leather, and a large
corner room in which Hitler received his visitors beneath a portrait of
Frederick the Great. The Brown House was opened at the beginning of
1931 , a very different setting from the dingy rooms in the Cornelius-
strasse or the Schellingstrasse. Before that, in 1929 , Hitler himself had
moved to a large nine-roomed flat covering the entire second floor of
No. 16 , Prinzregentenstrasse, one of Munich’s fashionable streets. Frau
Winter, from the Thierschstrasse, came to keep house for him, while
Frau Raubal continued to look after Haus Wachenfeld at Berchtesgaden.
Hitler himself was now seen more frequently m Munich, occasionally
in the company of his favourite niece. Cell Raubal, who had a room in
the new flat.

Not only the paymasters, but also the voters of the Right had been
impressed by the fact that whatever success had been won in the cam-
paign against the Young Plan was due to Hitler and the Nazis. For years
Hitler had been pouring scorn on the bourgeois parties of the Right for
their “respectable” inhibitions and their failure to go to the masses.
Nov/ he had been able to demonstrate, on a larger scale than ever before,
what he meant. He underlined his criticism by promptly breaking with
the National Party once the campaign was over and placing the entire
blame for the failure on their half-hearted support. The fact that the
Nationalists had split over Hugenberg’s tactics added weight to Hitler’s
criticism, and the lesson was not lost on those who sought more effective
means to damage and undermine the democratic Republic. In the pro-
vincial elections from October, 1929 onwards, the Nazis made consider-
able gains in Baden, Liibeck, Thuringia, Saxony and Brunswick, as well
as in the communal and municipal elections in Prussia — and they made
them very largely at the expense of the National Party. In Thuringia, in
December, they won eleven per cent of the votes cast and Frick became
the first Nazi to assume office as Thuringian Minister of the Interior.
In the summer of 1929 the membership of the Nazi Party had been
120,000; by the end of 1929 it was 178,000; by March, 1930, it had grown
to 210,000.

At the Party conference which followed the alliance with Hugenberg
Hitler had had to meet a good deal of criticism, voiced by Gregor
Strasser, of the dangers of being tarred with the reactionary brush and
losing support by too close association with the “old gang,” the old
ruling class of pre-war Germany, the industrialists, the Junkers, the
former generals and higher officials who were the backbone of the

134

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

National Party. His critics had underestimated Hitler’s unscrupulous-
ness, that characteristic duphcity, now first exhibited on this scale. With
considerable skill he turned an episode which in itself was an outright
failure to great political advantage for himself and his Party, then not
only dropped the alliance with Hugenberg and the Nationalists as
unexpectedly as he had made it, but proceeded to attack them. For
Hugenberg the campaign against the Young Plan was one more in the
disastrous series of mistakes which marked his leadership of the National
Party; for Hitler it was a decisive stage, the foundations for the use which
he was able to make of the months of opportunity ahead.

In the six years since the ending of 1923 Germany had made an astonish-
ing recovery. This recovery, however, was abruptly ended in 1930 under
the impact of the World Depression. The fact that 1930 was also the year
in which Hitler and the Nazi Party for the first time became a major
factor in national politics is not fortuitous. Ever since he came out of
prison at the end of 1924 Hitler had prophesied disaster, only to see the
Republic steadily consolidate itself. Those who ever heard of Adolf
Hitler shrugged their shoulders and called him a fool. Now, in 1930,
disaster cast its shadow over the land again, and the despised prophet
entered into his inheritance. Three years later he told a Munich audience :
“We are the result of the distress for which the others were responsible.”^
It was the depression which tipped the scales against the Republic and
for the first time since 1923 shifted the weight of advantage to Hitler* s
side.

No country in the world was more susceptible to the depression, which
began in the U.S.A. in 1929, intensified and spiead in 1930 and 1931,
and lasted throughout 1932. Its economic symptoms were manifold:
contracting trade and production, cessation of foreign loans and the
withdrawal of money already lent, falls in prices and wages, the closing
of factories and businesses, unemployment and bankruptcy, the forced
sale of property and farms. The foundation of German economic
recovery had been the large amounts of money borrowed from abroad.
Not only had much of this borrowed money been spent extravagantly;
no one had faced the question of how it was to be repaid if the supply
of further loans came to an end, and the money already lent, much of it
^ Speech at Munich, 24 February, 1933. Baynes; vol. I, page 252,

135

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

advantages— cattle-trading, is the expressive German word—
were not displeased with this situation. Weak governments suited them
to this extent that it made those in power more accessible to party
pressure and blackmail. But the short-sightedness of this view became
evident the moment the country was faced with a major crisis. From
March, 1930, it no longer proved possible to construct a coalition
government which could be sure of a majority of votes in the Reichstag.
Each section of the community — ^industrialists, trade unionists, shop-
keepers, landowners, farmers — ^looked to the State for aid and relief
while grudging it to the others. Instead of drawing closer together to
establish a government of unity with an agreed programme, the parties
insisted on forwarding the sectional economic interests they repre-
sented, without regard to the national interests. Differences on the share
of sacrifice each class was to bear— whether unemployment pay and
wages were to be cut, taxes raised, a capital levy exacted, tariffs increased,
and help given to landowners and farmers— were allowed to become so
bitter that the methods of parliamentary government, which in Germany
meant the construction of a coalition by a process of political bargaining,
became more and more difficult to follow. Dr. Bruening, who became
Chancellor at the end of March, 1930, had to rely on precarious
majorities in the Reichstag labonously reassembled for each piece of
legislation. Effective government on such a basis was impossible. On
16 July, 1930, the Reichstag rejected part of the Government’s fiscal
programme by 256 votes to 193. Thereupon the President, by virtue of
the emergency powers granted to him in Article 48 of the Weimar
Constitution, put the Chancellor’s programme into effect by decree.
The Reichstag challenged the constitutionality of this action and
passed a further motion demanding the abrogation of the decrees.
Bruening’s retort was to dissolve the house and fix new elections.

The responsibility for this deadlock has been much disputed. The case
against the Party leaders is that they forced Bruening to act as he did
by their refusal to combine; the case against Bruening is that he failed
to do all that could have been done to win parliamentary support and
that he was too quick to resort to emergency powers. But whoever
bore the responsibility, one thing was clear: unless the new elections
produced the basis for a stable coalition, which seemed^unlikely, parlia-
mentary institutions were in danger of being discredited by their failure
to provide the strong government which the country so obviously needed.

Such a situation was much to the advantage of the Nazis, who had
been unremitting in their attacks on the parliamentary republic and

138

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

democratic methods of government. The Nazis had already shown
they were alit'e to the possibilities opening before them by launching
a propaganda campaign especially designed to win support among the
first class to feel the onset of the depression, the farmers. Through
Hess, Hitler had met a German agricultural expert, Walther Darr^
(like Hess and Rosenberg, born abroad), who had recently written a book
on the peasantry as the “Life Source of the Nordic Race,” Hitler was
impressed by Darrd and appointed him as the Party’s agricultural
adviser with the commission to draw up a peasant programme. This
was published over Hitler’s name on 6 March, 1930, and was marked
not only by practical proposals to give economic aid to the farming
population — Slate-credits, reduction and remission of taxes, higher
tariffs, cheaper artificial manures, cheaper electricity, and the revision
of the inheritance laws — but also by its insistence upon the peasantry
as the most valuable class in the community. In the years ahead the
support which the Nazis received from the rural districts of Germany
richly repaid the work of propaganda and organization they began to
undertake there during 1930.

In the case of agriculture it was simple to play for the support of both
the big landowners and the peasants, since these had a common
economic interest in the demand for protection and higher prices, and
a common grievance in their neglect by parties which were too pre-
occupied with the urban population of Germany. But when it came to
industry, business and trade (especially the retail trade), it was not so
easy to square the circle, for here there was an open clash of interests
and bitter antagonism between the workers and the employers, no less
than between the small trader or shopkeeper and the big companies and
department stores. Hitler needed the support of both, of the industrialists
and big business interests because they controlled the funds to finance his
organization and propaganda, of the masses because they had the votes.
But in origin the National Socialists had been a radical anti-capitalist
party, and this side of the Nazi programme was not only taken seriously
by many loyal Party members but was of increasing importance in a
period of economic depression.

The question, how seriously Hitler took the socialist character of
National Socialism, had already been raised both before and after 1923.
It was to remain one of the main causes of disagreement and division
within the Nazi Party up to the summer of 1934; this was well illustrated
in 1930 by the final breach between Hitler and Otto Strasser.

When Gregor Strasser moved to Munich, his brother Otto remained
in Berlin, and through his paper, the Arbeitsblatt (which was actually

139

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Still the official Nazi journal in the north), and his publishing house, the
Kampfverlag, maintained an independent radical line which irritated and
embarrassed Hitler. In April, 1930, the trade unions in Saxony declared
a strike, and Otto Strasser came out in full support of their action in the
papers which he controlled, notably the Sachsicher Beobachter, the Nazi
paper in Saxony. It was made perfectly plain to Hitler by the industrial-
ists, on their side, that unless the Party at once repudiated the stand
Strasser had taken there would be no more subsidies. With the help of
Mutschmann, the Gauleiter of Saxony, Hitler enforced an order that no
member of the Party was to take part in the strike, but he was unable to
silence Strasser’s papers. Following this, on 21 May Hitler suddenly
appeared in Berlin and invited Otto Strasser to meet him for a discussion
at his hotel. Strasser agreed, and on that day and the next they ranged
over the whole field of their differences. The only account we possess of
the discussion is Otto Strasser’s, but there is little doubt that it can be
accepted as accurate in substance. It was published very shortly after-
wards, it was never challenged or repudiated by Hitler — although it
must have done him considerable damage in some quarters— and all
that Hitler is reported to have said is perfectly consistent with his known
opinions.^

Hitler’s tactics were a characteristic mixture of bribery, appeals and
threats. He offered to take over the Kampfverlag on generous terms, and
make Otto Strasser his Press Chief for the entire Reich, he appealed to
him, with tears in his eyes and in the name of his brother Gregor, as an
ex-soldier and a veteran National Socialist; he threatened that if Strasser
would not submit to his orders he would drive him and his supporters
out of the Party and forbid any Party member to have anything to do
with him or his publications.

The discussion began with an argument about race and art, but
soon shifted to political topics. Hitler attacked an article Strasser had
published on “Loyalty and Disloyalty,” in which the writer, Herbert
Blank, had distinguished between the Idea, which is eternal, and the
Leader, who is only its servant. “This is all bombastic nonsense,” Hitler
declared, “it boils down to this that you would give every Party member
the right to decide on the idea — even to decide whether the leader is true
to the so-called idea or not. This is democracy at its worst, and there is
no place for such a view with us. With us the Leader and the Idea
are one, and every Party member has to do what the leader orders. The

1 The account that follows is taken from Otto Strasser. Mmistersessel oder Revo-
lution'^, the pamphlet version he published at the time (1930), and from the bnefer
English version m Otto Strasser: Hitler and I, pages 109-127.

140

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Leader incorporates the Idea and alone knows its ultimate goal. Our
organization is built up on discipline. I have no wish to see this organ-
ization broken up by a few swollen-headed Iitttoteurs. You were a
soldier yourself. ... I ask you: are you prepared to submit to this
discipline or not?”

After further discussion, Otto Strasser came to what he regarded as
the heart of the matter. “You want to strangle the social revolution,” he
told Hitler, “for the sake of legality and your new collaboration with the
bourgeois parties of the Right.”

Hitler, who was rattled by this suggestion, retorted angrily: “I am a
Socialist, and a very different kind of Socialist from your rich friend,
Reventlow. I was once an ordinary working-man. I would not allow my
chauffeur to eat worse than I eat myself. What you understand by
Socialism is nothing but Marxism. Now look : the great mass of working-
men want only bread and circuses. They have no understanding for ideals
of any sort whatever, and we can never hope to win the workers to any
large extent by an appeal to ideals. We want to make a revolution for the
new dominating caste which is not moved, as you are, by the ethic of
pity, but is quite clear in its own mind that it has the right to dominate
others because it represents a better race: this caste ruthlessly maintains
and assures its dominance over the masses.

“What you preach is liberalism, nothing but liberalism,” Hitler con-
tinued. “There are no revolutions except racial revolutions: there
cannot be a political, economic or social revolution — ^always and only
it is the struggle of the lower stratum of inferior race against the domi-
nant higher race, and if this higher race has forgotten the law of its exis-
tence, then it loses the day.” '

On the next day, 22 May, the conversation was continued in the
presence of Gregor Strasser, Max Amann, Hess and one of Otto
Strasser’s supporters, Hinkel. Strasser had demanded the nationalization
of industry. Hitler regarded such a proposal with scorn: “Democracy
has laid the world in ruins, and nevertheless you want to extend it to the
economic sphere. It would be the end of German economy. . . . The
capitahsts have worked their way to the top through their capacity, and
on the basis of this selection, which again only proves their higher race,
they have a right to lead. Now you want an incapable Government
Council or Works Council, which has no notion of anything, to have a
say: no leader in economic life would tolerate it.”

When Strasser asked him what he would do with Krupps if he came to
power. Hitler at once replied: “Of course I should leave it alone. Do
you think that I should be so mad as to destroy Germany’s economy?

141

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Only if people should fail to act in the interests of the nation, then— and
only then — ^would the State intervene. But for that you do not need
any expropriation, you do not need to give the workers the right to
have a voice in the conduct of the business: you need only a strong
State.”

For the moment the conversation was left unfinished. But at the end
of June Hitler wrote to Goebbels instructing him to drive Otto Strasser
and his supporters from the Party. Goebbels obliged with alacrity.
Otto Strasser stuck to his Socialist principles, published his talks with
Hitler, broke with his brother Gregor (who stayed with Hitler), and set
up a Union of Revolutionary National Socialists, later known as the
Black Front. The dispute over the Socialist objectives of National
Socialism was not yet settled — ^it was to reappear again and again in the
next few years— but Hitler had only gained, not lost, by making clear his
own attitude. Even in the provincial elections in Saxony, held in June,
1930, the Nazi representation rose from five to fourteen, making them
the second strongest party in Saxony, despite Hitler’s open repudiation
of the strike earlier in the year. In September the Nazi success at the
National elections astonished the world. It was Hitler, not Strasser, who
captured the mass vote, while the Black Front dwindled into insigni-
ficance and its founder sought refuge over the frontier.

In the election campaign, which followed the dissolution in July and led
up to polling day on 14 September, the Nazis used every trick of propa-
ganda to attract attention and win votes. In the big towns there was a
marked increase in public disorder in which the S.A. took a prominent
part. Slogans painted on walls, posters, demonstrations, rallies, mass
meetings, crude and unrestrained demagogy, anything that would help
to create an impression of energy, determination and success was pressed
into use. Hitler’s appeal in the towns was especially to the middle-class
hit by the depression, and was aimed to take votes from the more
moderate and respectable bourgeois parties like the Democrats, the
People’s Party and the Economic Party— as well as from the rival parties
of the Right, Hugenberg’s Nationalists and the break-away Conser-
vatives of Treviranus. He had advantages over both. He was prepared
to be much more extreme than the middle-class parties at a time when
extremism was the growing mood, and he was able to exploit German
nationalism and xenophobia without rousing the dislike many people
142

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

felt for the Nationalists and Conservatives as “class” parties, preoccu-
pied with putting the old ruling class back in power. What Hitler offered
them was their own lower middle-class brand of extremism — radical,
anti-Semitic, against the trusts and the big capitalists, but at the same
time (unlike the Communists and the Social Democrats) socially res-
pectable; nationalist, pan-German, against Versailles and Reparations,
without looking back all the time (as the Nationalists did) to the lost
glories and social prestige of the past and the old Imperial Germany.

At the same time the Nazis devoted much time and attention to the
rural voter, and in both town and countryside swept in the new gener-
ation. Many who were voting for the first time responded eagerly to
attacks on the “System” which left them without jobs, and to the
display of energy, the demand for discipline, sacrifice, action and not
talk, which was the theme of Nazi propaganda.

In 1930 the mood of a large section of the German nation was one of
resentment. Hitler, with an almost inexhaustible fund of resentment
in his own character to draw from, offered them a series of objects on
which to lavish all the blame for their misfortunes. It was the Allies,
especially the French, who were to blame, with their determination to
enslave the German people; the Republic, with its corrupt and self-
seeking politicians; the money barons, the bosses of big business, the
speculators and the monopolists; the Reds and the Marxists, who
fostered class hatred and kept the nation divided; above all, the Jews,
who fattened and grew rich on the degradation and weakness of the
German people. The old parties and politicians offered no redress; they
were themselves contaminated with the evils of the system they sup-
ported. Germany must look to new men, to a new movement to raise her
up again, to make her strong and feared, to restore to her people the
dignity, security and prosperity which were their birthright, to recover the
old Gennan virtues of discipline, industry, self-reliance and self-respect.

To audiences weighed down with anxiety and a sense of helplessness
Hitler cried: If the economic experts say this or that is impossible, to
hell with economics. What counts is will, and if our will is hard and
ruthless enough we can do anything. The Germans are the greatest
people on eaith. It is not your fault that you were defeated in the war
and have suffered so much since. It is because you were betrayed m
1918 and have been exploited ever since by those who are envious of
you and hate you; because you have been too honest and too patient.
Let Germany awake and renew her strength, let her remember her
greatness and recover her old position in the world, and for a start let’s
clear out the old gang in Berlin.

143

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

This is a fair summary of the sort of speech Hitler and his lieutenants
made at hundreds of meetings in the summer of 1930. Their opponents
scorned such methods as being demagogy of the most blatant kind,
but it showed a psychological perception of the mood of a large section
of the German people which was wholly lacking from the campaigns
of the other parties. Hitler never forgot the principle he had underlined
in Mem KampJ: go for the masses. Their neglect of this accounted, in
Hitler’s eyes, for the failure of the other principal Right-wing Party, the
Nationalists, to recover its old position in the country. Only the Com-
munists could rival Hitler in this sort of agitation, but the Communists
deliberately limited their appeal to one class, while Hitler aimed to unite
the discontented of all classes; the Communists were hampered by
rigid doctrinaire beliefs, while Hitler was prepared to adapt or abandon
his programme to suit his audience; and the Communists, while they
could outbid the Nazis in radicalism, pould not hope to match the skill
with which Hitler played on the nationalist drum as well, potentially the
most powerful appeal in German pohtics.

In the middle of September thirty million Germans went to the polls,
four millions more than in 1928. The results surprised even Hitler, who
had hoped at most for fifty or sixty seats. The Nazi vote leaped from the
1928 figure of 810,000 to 6,409,600, and their numbers in the Reichstag
from 12 to 107. From ninth the Nazis had become the second Party in
the State. Little less spectacular were the Communists’ gains, 4,592,000
votes as against 3,265,000 in 1928, and 77 in place of 54 deputies in the
Reichstag. The two parties which had openly campaigned for the
overthrow of the existing regime and had deliberately framed their
appeal in extremist terms had together won close on a third of the votes
and of the seats in the new House. The three bourgeois parties, the
Democrats, the People’s Party and the Economic Party, had lost a
million and a quarter of their 1928 votes between them, and had com-
pletely failed to capture the new votes of those who went to the polls for
the first time. Still more interesting from Hitler’s point of view was the
fact that the biggest set-back in the elections had been suffered by his
chief rivals on the Right, the Nationalists, whose vote fell from 4,381,600
in 1928 to 2,458,300 m 1930. Although Hugenberg succeeded in reuniting
some of the factions into which the German National Party had been
split, with only 41 deputies against Hitler’s 107 he was now in a position
of inferiority in any combination of the Right that might be proposed.

Overnight, therefore. Hitler had become a politician of European
importance. The foreign correspondents flocked to interview him.
144

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

The Times printed his assurances of goodwill at length, while in the
Daily Mail Lord Rothermere welcomed Hitler’s success as a reinforce-
ment of the defences against Bolshevism.

Now that the Nazis had won this great electoral success the question
arose, what use were they going to make of it. Hitler gave part of an
answer in a speech he made at Munich ten days after the election; “If
today our action employs among its different weapons that of Parlia-
ment, that is not to say that parliamentary parties exist only for parlia-
mentary ends. For us Parliament is not an end in itself, but merely a
means to an end. ... We are not on principle a parliamentary Party —
that would be a contradiction of our whole outlook — ^we are a parlia-
mentary Party by compulsion, under constraint, and that compulsion
is the Constitution. The Constitution compels us to use this means. . . .
And so this victory that we have just won is nothing else than the
winning of a new weapon for our fight It is not for seats in Parlia-

ment that we fight, but we win seats in Parliament in order that one day
we may be able to liberate the German people.”^

This was quite in accord with what Hitler had said before the elections :
“It is not parliamentary majorities that mould the fate of nations. We
know, however, that in this election democracy must be defeated with
the weapons of democracy.”^ What Hitler’s speech failed to make clear
was how far he meant to go with these tactics of legality; whether he
meant to use the Nazi faction in the Reichstag to discredit democratic
institutions and bring government to a standstill, following this with a
seizure of power by force; or whether he intended to come to power
legally as a result of success in the elections and postpone any revolu->
tionary action until after he had secured control of the machinery of the
State.

Almost certainly it was the second of these alternatives which Hitler
had in mind. Hitler meant to have his revolution, but he meant to have
it after, not before, he came to power. He was too impressed by the
power of the State to risk defeat in the streets, as he had, against his
better judgment, in November, 1923. The revolutionary romanticism
of the barricades was out of date; it had ceased to be plausible since the
invention of the machine-gun. Hitler’s aim now — as it had been in 1923
—was a revolution with the power of the State on his side. But revolution
was not the means of securing such power; that had to be obtained
legally.

* Baynes: vol. I, pages 188-190, quoting the Frankfurter Zeitung for 26 September,
1930.

“ Hitler at Munich, 18 July, 1930. Prange: page 42.

145

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

There were several reasons, however, why Hitler was unwilling to say
this too openly. He had to consider the elfect such a declaration might
have on his own Party. For many were attracted to the Party by the
promise of violence. They thought in terms of a March on Berlin and the
seizure of power by an act of force, and they only tolerated Hitler’s talk
of legality because they thought it was a camouflage behind which the
real plans for a putsch could be prepared with greater immunity. At the
same time, his greatest asset in persuading those who controlled access
to power— the Army commanders, for instance, and the President’s
advisers — ^to bring him in, was their fear that he would seize power by
force if his terms were not met peacefully. To repudiate revolution
altogether was to throw away his best chance of coming to power
legally. Finally, Hitler had always to reckon with the possibility that, if
the tactics of legality failed, he might be faced with the alternatives of
political decline or making a putsch in earnest. It was a gamble which
Hitler would always be reluctant to make, but one which, in desperation,
he might be forced to take. Meanwhile the attitude of the average Party
member was probably best summed up by Goering when he said:
“We are fighting against this State and the present System because we
wish to destroy it utterly, but in a legal manner— for the long-eared
plain-clothes men. Before we had the Law for the Protection of the
Republic we said we hated this State; under this law we say we love it —
and stiU everyone knows what we mean.”^

Two particular problems were bound up with the question of legality
which recur throughout the history of the National Socialist movement
up to 1934, the relations of the Nazi Party and the Army, and the role
*10 be played by the brown-shirted S.A. The two questions are in fact
only different sides of the same penny, but it will be easier to deal with
them separately.

Since Roehm’s resignation the relations between the Nazis and the
Army had been bad. In an eflbrt to keep control over the S.A., Hitler
had forbidden them to have any connection with the Army, and the
Ministry of Defence had retorted by forbidding the Army to accept
National Socialists as recruits or to employ them in arsenals and supply
depots, “since the Party has set itself the aim of overthrowing the
constitutional State form of the German Reich.” This was in 1927.

Yet Hitler was very much aware that the support, or at least the neu-
trality, of the Army was the essential key to his success— as it had been
in 1923. In March, 1929, he delivered a speech at Munich on the subject

^ Kempner: page 121.

146

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

of National Socialism and the Armed Forces which was in the nature
both of a challenge to the Army and of a bid for its favour. Hitler began
by attacking the idea which General von Seeckt had made the guiding
pnnciple of the new Army— that the Army must stand apart from
politics. This, Hitler declared, was simply to put the Army at the service
of the Republican rdgime, which had stabbed the old Army in the back
m 1918 and betrayed Germany to her enemies.

There is another State in which the Army had a different conception of these
needs. That was in the State where, m October, 1922, a group made ready
to take the reins of the State out of the hands of the gangsters, and the
Italian Army did not say: “Our only job is to protect peace and order.”
Instead they said: “It is our task to preserve the future for the Italian
people.” And the future does not lie with the parties of destruction, but
rather with the parties who carry in themselves the strength of the people,
who are prepared and who wish to bind themselves to this Army, in order to
aid the Army some day m defending the interests of the people. In contrast
we still see the oflBcers of oui Army belatedly toimenting themselves with the
question as to how far one can go along with Social-Democracy. But, my
dear sirs, do you really believe that you have anything in common with an
ideology which stipulates the dissolution of all that which is the basis of the
existence of an army? . . .

The victory of one course or the other lies partially in the hands of the
Army— that is, the victory of the Marxists or of our side. Should the Leftists
win out through your wonderful un-political attitude, you may write over the
German Army: “The end of the German Army.” For then, gentlemen, you
must definitely become political, then the red cap of the Jacobins will be

drawn over your heads You may then become hangmen of the regime

and political commissars, and, if you do not behave, your wife and child will,
be put behind locked doors. And if you still do not behave, you will be
thrown out and perhaps stood up against a wall, for a human life counts little
to those who are out to destroy a people.^

Hitler’s speech was published verbatim in a special Army issue of the
Volkischer Beobachter, and Hitler followed it up by articles m a new Nazi
monthly, the Deutscher Wehrgeist {The German Military Spirit), in
which he argued that by its attitude of hostility towards nationalist
movements like the Nazis the Army was betraying its own traditions and
cutting the ground away from under its own feet. Hitler’s arguments,
which showed again his uncanny skill in penetrating the minds of those
he sought to influence, were not without effect, especially among the
younger ofificers, who saw little prospect of promotion in an army
limited by the Treaty to a hundred thousand men, and who were

^ Hitler’s speech, delivered on 15 March, 1929, is quoted at length in Kempner-
pages 99-105.

147

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

attracted by Hitler’s promises that he would at once expand and restore
the Army to its old position in the State if he came to power.

The success of this Nazi campaign to win over opinion m the Army
was shown in 1930 at the trial of Lieutenants Scheringer, Ludin and
Wendt before the Supreme Tribunal at Leipzig. In November, 1929,
Scheringer and Ludin, who were officers of the Ulm garrison, had gone
to Munich and there got into touch with a number of Nazi leaders,
including Captain von Pfeffer, the chief of the S.A. They had undertaken
to bring as many other officers as they could into sympathy with the
Nazi point of view and had subsequently travelled to Hanover and
Berlin on this business. To Lieutenants Wintzer and Lorenz, whom he
met at Hanover, Ludin declared that the Army must be prevented from
running into a conflict with Hitler like that of 1923. The Nazis would not
enter into anything if they knew the Army would oppose them, and the
Army must be prevented from taking up such an attitude of opposition.
The important thing was to find a few officers in each mihtary district
who could be relied on.

Shortly afterwards, in February, 1930, Scheringer, Ludin and Wendt
were arrested and charged with spreading Nazi propaganda in the Army.
General Groener, the Minister of Defence, tried to treat the matter as a
simple breach of discipline, but was compelled by the attitude of the
accused to let the case go before the Supreme Court at Leipzig. Groener
was criticized for this by General von Seeckt himself and by other
senior officers; Seeckt accused him of weakening the spirit of comrade-
ship and solidarity within the Officer Corps, a revealing comment.

»■ By the time the trial opened, on 23 September, Hitler had become the
leader of the second most powerful Party in the country, and the Army
leaders were extremely interested to discover what his attitude towards
the Army would be. On 25 September Hans Frank, the Nazi defence
lawyer, introduced Hitler as a witness. Hitler did not miss his oppor-
tunity and every one of his statements was made with an eye to its effect,
not on the Court, but on the Army. He went out of his way to reassure
them about the S.A. Stormtroops. “They were set up exclusively for the
purpose of protecting the Party in its propaganda, not to fight against
the State. I have been a soldier long enough to know that it is impossible
for a Party Organization to fight against the disciplined forces of the
Army. ... I did everything I could to prevent the S.A. from assuming
any kind of military character. I have always expressed the opinion that
any attempt to replace the Army would be senseless. We are none of us
interested in replacing the Army; my only wish is that the German

148

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

State and the German people should be imbued with a new
spirit.”^

For the same reason, he insisted, “I have always held the view that
every attempt to disintegrate the Army was madness. None of us have
any interest in such disintegration.” In view of the evidence before the
Court this was a barefaced lie, but Hitler earned it off with assurance:
“We will see to it that, when we have come to power, out of the present
Reichswehr a great German People’s Army shall arise. There are
thousands of young men in the Army of the same opinion.”

The President of the Court here interrupted to remark that the Nazis
could scarcely hope to realize these ideals by legal means. Hitler indig-
nantly denied this. There were no secret directives. “On questions of
this kind only my orders are valid and my basic principle is that if a
Party regulation conflicts with the law it is not to be carried out. I am
even now punishing failure to comply with my orders. Many Parly
members have been expelled for this reason; among them Otto Strasser,
who toyed with the idea of revolution.”

All this was meant for the generals, but there was also the Party to be
considered, and Hitler added, with sinister ambiguity: “I can assure you
that, when the Nazi movement’s struggle is successful, then there will be
a Nazi Court of Justice too, the November, 1918, revolution will be
avenged, and heads will roll.” At this there were loud cheers from the
gallery.

What then, asked the President, did Hitler mean by the expression, the
German National Revolution?

It should always be considered (Hitler blandly replied) in a purely political
sense. For the Nazis it means simply an uprising of the oppressed German

people Our movement represents such an uprising, but it does not need

to prepare it by illegal means Our propaganda is the spiritual revolution-

izing of the German people. 'Our movement has no need of force. The time
Will come when the German nation will get to know of our ideas , then thii ty-
five million Germans will stand behind me. ... We will enter the legal
organizations and will make our Party a decisive factor in this way. Bat
when we do possess constitutional rights, then we will form the State m the
manner which we consider to be the right one.

The President: This, too, by constitutional means.

Hitler. Yes.^

When General Jodi was examined at Nuremberg after the war he told
the Tribunal that he had not been reassured until Hitler, during the
Leipzig Trial, gave the assurance that he was opposed to any disorgan-
* Frankjurter Zeitung, 26 September, 1930. * Ibid.

liQ

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1939

izatioa of the Reichswehr.^ There is, indeed, little doubt that it was
Hitler’s explicit statement at Leipzig, coming immediately after his
success in the elections, which provided the basis for his subsequent
negotiations with the Army leaders and their eventual agreement to his
assumption of power.

Hitler’s talk of legality, however, was only a half-truth, a trick to get
power on the cheap, to persuade the generals and the other guardians
of the State to hand over power without forcing him to seize it. They were
only tactics of legality, for everything about the movement proclaimed
its brazen contempt for law. Hitler had therefore to take care that in his
preoccupation with tactics he did not so far compromise the revolution-
ary character of his movement as to rob it of its attractive power. The
possibihty of such a danger was illustrated by the subsequent history of
Lieutenant Scheringer, who, after being condemned to eighteen months’
imprisonment, went over to the Communists while still in prison. When
Goebbels telegraphed to ask if the letter which a Communist deputy
had read in the Reichstag was genuine, Scheringer wired back: “Declar-
ation authentic. Hitler revolution betrayed.” If many others were to
follow Scheringer— or Otto Strasser— Hitler would be in a difficult
position.

The danger point was the S.A., which was to become, between 1930
and the summer of 1934, the expression of the Party’s revolutionary
purpose. One of the favourite S.A. slogans was: “Possession of the
streets is the key to power in the State,” and from the beginning of 1930
^the political struggle in the Reichstag and at elections was supplemented
—in part replaced— by the street fights of the Party armies in Berlin and
the other big cities of Germany.

In the course of one of these gang feuds in February, 1930, a young
Berlin S.A. leader, Horst Wessel, was shot by the Communists, and was
skilfully built up by Goebbels into the prototype of the martyred Nazi
idealist, whose verses provided the S.A. with their marching song, the
famous Horst Wessel Lied. In the first six months of 1930 the authorities
issued a number of prohibitions to check this growth of public disorder.
Outdoor meetings and parades were forbidden in Prussia (16 January); a
new Law for the Protection of the Republic and for the suppression of
political disturbances was passed by the Reichstag in March; in June
the Prussian Minister of the Interior prohibited the Nazis from wearing
uniforms and emblems. But these measures proved ineffective; forbidden

' Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, part XV, pages
276 - 7 .

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

to wear their brown shirts, the Nazis paraded in white. Night after night
they and the Communists marched in formation singing down the
streets, broke up rival political meetings, beat up opponents and raided
each other’s “territory.” As the unemployment figures rose, the number
of recruits mounted. Anything was better than loafing on the street
corners, and the S.A. offered a meal and a uniform, companionship
and something exciting to do.

In July, 1930, one of the Nazi deputies, Wagner, summed up the
character of the Nazi campaign in one sentence, when he said: “The
N.S.D.A.P. will not let the people rest in peace until they have obtained
power.” The key to this campaign was incessant activity, a sustained
effort of propaganda and agitation not limited to elections, but kept up
all the year round. In this the S.A. had an essential part to play, for
violence and the display of force had always formed a central part of
Nazi propaganda. But it was propaganda that Hitler had in mind; the
S.A. were to be the shock troops of a revolution that was never to be
made. Hitler’s problem was to keep the spirit of the S.A. alive without
allowing it to find an outlet in revolutionary action; to use them as a
threat of civil war, yet never to let them get so far out of hand as to com-
promise his plan of coming to power without a head-on collision with the
forces of the State, above all with the Army.

Just before the elections of September, 1930, the Berlin S.A. mutinied
and smashed up the Berlin headquarters of the Party. Their real griev-
ance was their pay, but undercurrents of discontent against the Party
leadership also came to the surface. Goebbels proved incapable of
handling the situation— he had actually to ask for police protection to
get the Brown Shirts out of headquarters— and Hitler had to intervene'
personally. He levied a special tax for the S.A. on the whole Party, came
at once to Berlin and drove round one beer-hall after another, appealing
to the Stormtroopers, promising them better pay, telling them the Party
was on the eve of great victories, and assuring them that in future bad
leaders (on whom he threw the blame) would not be allowed to come
between him and the faithful rank-and-file. At the end of an exhausting
night Hitler had restored his authority; he promptly took the oppor-
tunity to retire Captain von Pfeffer, and on 2 September himself
assumed the position of O.S. A.F. {Oberster S.A. Supreme S.A.

Leader).

In the electoral successes that followed, the incident was soon for-
gotten— not, however, by Hitler. The following month, October, he
persuaded Ernst Roehm, then serving as an officer in the Bolivian Army,
to leave South America and return to Germany, to take over the reorgan-

151

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

ization of the S.A. as its Chief of Staff. la Roehm, he hoped, he had
found the man to pull the S.A. together and keep it in hand.

Despite these troubles, as the year 1930 came to an end Hitler had con-
siderable cause for satisfaction. Party membership was rising towards
the four hundred thousand figure; a vote of more than six millions at the
elections had raised the Nazi strength in the Reichstag to 107. When the
swastika flag was hoisted over the Brown House on 1 January, 1931, he
could feel he had already covered the most difficult part of the road;
there was no danger now that people would not pay attention to the
unknown man of the 1920s. In the Reichstag the Nazis — every man in
brown uniform — ^had already shown their strength and their contempt
for Parliament by creating such disorder that the sittings had to be
frequently suspended. In the streets the S.A. had scored another
triumph by forcing the Government to ban the further showing of the
anti-militarist film. All Quiet on the Western Front, by calculated hooli-
ganism.

Hitler was in no danger of underestimating the opposition to his
leadership which still existed in the Party. Failure or setbacks would
bring it quickly to the surface; success alone would silence criticism. Yet
success no longer seemed impossible. This was the measure of his
acluevement in 1930. He had reached the threshold of power.

VIII

At the beginning of January, 1931, Roehm took over his new duties as
Chief of Staff of the S.A. He immediately set to work to make the S.A.
by far the most efficient of the Party armies. The whole of Germany was
divided into twenty-one districts, with an S.A. Group in each under the
command of an Obergruppenfuehrer. The organization was closely
modelled on that of the Army, with its own headquarters and General
Staff quite separate from the organization of the Party, and its own
training college for S.A. and S.S. leaders opened at Munich in June,
1931.

Since 1929 Himmler had been Reichsfuehrer of the S.S., but he too
was now brought under Roehm, although the S.S. with its distinctive
black uniform and death’s-head badge retained its separate identity.
Another of Roehm’s auxiliaries was the N.S.K.K.— the Nazi Motor
Corps— a flying squad under the command of Major Huehnlein. At the
time Roehm took over, in January, 1931, the S.A. numbered roughly

152

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

a hundred thousand men; a year later Hitler could claim three hundred
thousand.

The Party Organization itself, designed by Gregor Strasscr, also
followed a highly centralized pattern, subject to the will of the Party
chairman and leader, Hitler. The basis of this organization was the Gau
and the Gauleiter, each Gau in turn being divided and subdivided down
to the lowest unit, the Cell, corresponding to the S.A. squad. The central
directorate of the Party was still in Munich, where special departments
sprang up and multiplied rapidly, among them the Factory Cell
Organization (N.S. Betriebszellen Organization), under Walther
Schumann; the Economic Pohcy Department, run by Otto Wagener;
and the pension fund (Hilfskasse), administered by Martin Bormann, to
aid the families of those killed or disabled in the Party’s fight.^

The direction of the Party in the years 1931 and 1932 was for all
practical purposes in the hands of six men — Hitler himself, Roehm,
Gregor Strasser, Goering, Goebbels and Frick. Roehm’s importance
consisted not only in his brilliant talents as an organizer and his office as
Chief of Staff of the S.A., but also in his contacts with the Army.
Goering, with his wide range of acquaintances, his good-humoured
charm and ease of manner, became in the course of 1931 Hitler’s chief
political “contact-man” in the capital, with a general comimssion to
negotiate with other parties and groups.^ The following year he was
Hitler’s choice for the Presidency of the Reichstag when this office fell
to the Nazis as the strongest Party. From the end of August, 1932, when
he was elected, to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the Reichstag
President’s palace opposite the Reichstag was the centre from which
the Party’s manoeuvres and intrigues were directed.

The leader of the Nazi Parly in the Reichstag — and the first Nazi
Minister to hold office (in Thuringia)— was Dr. Wilhelm Frick, by pro-
fession a civil servant, and in 1919-1923 one of Hitler’s protectors in the
Munich police. An early and convinced National Socialist, although
one of the less colourful of the Nazi leaders, he was useful to Hitler as a
good administrator and a man who knew thoroughly the machinery and
the mentality of the German civil service.

The remaining two had been enemies ever since Goebbels’ desertion
of Strasser at the Bamberg meeting in 1926. Both were able speakers,
and both held high office in the Party, Goebbels as Propaganda Director
and Gauleiter of Berlin, Strasser at the head of the Political Organ-
ization, with powerful influence among the Gauleiters and local

* For the departments already established, cf above, page 126.

“ Cf. Goenng’s evidence at Nuremberg, N.P. IX, page 68.

153

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

branches. How far Hitler trusted Strasser may well be questioned, but
Strasser was undoubtedly the most powerful of Hitler’s lieutenants,
the only man in the Party who, if he had had more of Hitler’s power of
will and ambition, and less good-natured easy-going Bavarian indul-
gence in his nature, might have challenged Hitler’s leadership. Strasser
possessed the personality to be a leader in his own right if he bestirred
himself; Goebbels, undersized, lame and much disliked for his malicious
tongue, could rise only under the asgis of someone like Hitler, to whom
he was useful for his abounding energy and fertility of ideas, apt at
times to be too clever and to over-reach himself, but exploiting with
brassy impudence every trick of propaganda.

There were others — Darre, the agricultural and peasant expert;
Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth; Hess, the Fuehrer’s
inseparable secretary; Wilhelm Bruckner, his personal adjutant; Max
Amann, the Party’s publisher; Franz Xavier Schwarz, the fat, bald Party
treasurer; Philipp Bouhler, the Party’s young business manager; Hans
Frank, the Party’s legal expert; and Otto Dietrich, its Press chief. But
none of these held anything like the position of Roehm and Strasser,
Goering and Goebbels, or even Frick, the five men with whom Hitler
captured power.

It is obvious that so highly organized a machine must have cost large
sums of money to run, yet there is no more difiScult question to answer
than how Hitler got that money. For unfortunately the evidence is both
incomplete and imprecise. A good deal of money, of course, came from
the Party itself— from membership dues; from the sale of Party news-
'papers and literature, which members were always being pressed to buy;
from the admission charges and collections at the big meetings. There is
no doubt that the Party made heavy demands on its members — even the
unemployed S.A. men had to hand over their unemployment-benefit
money in return for their food and shelter. Almost certainly the pro-
portion of revenue which was raised by the Party itself has been under-
estimated. But there were also subsidies from interested supporters.

Some light on the means by which these subsidies were obtained is
thrown by the interrogation of Walther Funk at Nuremberg after the
war. Funk, who was later to succeed Schacht as President of the Reichs-
bank and Minister of Economics, had been editor-in-chief of the Berliner
Boersen-Zeitung, a leading financial newspaper, in the 1920s. In 1931
he gave up his post as editor and began to act as a “contact-man”
between the Nazi Party and certain industrial and business interests.
For a time he ran the Wirtschaftspolitischer Pressedienst, an economic

THB YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Press and Information Service controlled by Dr. Wagencr, the head of
the Nazi Party’s Economic Policy Department. There were no more
than sixty subscribers to this agency, but according to Funk “they paid
very well.” In return Funk was expected to influence the Party’s
economic policy and to persuade Hitler to repudiate the anti-capitalist
views of men like Gottfried Feder. “At that time,” Funk says, “the
leadership of the Party held completely contradictory and confused
views on economic policy. I tried to accomplish my mission by im-
pressing on the Fuehrer and the Party as a whole that private initiative,
the self-reliance of the business man and the creative powers of free
enterprise should be recognized as the basic economic policy of the
Party. The Fuehrer personally stressed time and again, during talks with
me and industrial leaders to whom I had introduced him, that he was an
enemy of state-economy and of so-called ‘planned economy,’ and that
he considered free enterprise and competition as absolutely necessary
in order to gain the highest possible production.”^

An illustration of the consequences of the new contacts which Hitler
was now making is given by an incident which took place in the autumn
of 1930. On 14 October the Nazi Party in the Reichstag introduced a
bill to limit rates of interest to four per cent; to expropriate the entire
property of “the bank and stock-exchange magnates” and of all Eastern
Jews without compensation; and to nationalize the big banks. This was
the work of Gregor Strasser, Feder and Frick. Hitler at once intervened
and forced them to withdraw the motion. When the Communists re-
introduced the Bill in the exact wording the Nazis had used, he com-
pelled the Party to vote against it. If Hitler intended to impress Funk’s
friends, there was no room for such bills in the Party’s progiamme. On
the other hand. Funk found Hitler very reserved about the policy he
would himself adopt once in power. “I cannot,” Hitler told him, “com-
mit myself to an economic policy at present; the views expressed by my
economic theorists, such as Gottfried Feder, are not necessarily mine.”**
Hitler, in short, while anxious to keep the industrialists friendly, declined
to tie his own hands, and he very largely succeeded. As Funk admits:
“My industrial friends and I were convinced in those days that the
N.S.D.A.P. would come to power in the not too distant future and that
this had to be, if Communism and civil war were to be avoided.”®
Only a section of German industry and big business was willing to
support Hitler and the Nazis at this time. Funk says specifically that the
greater part of industry’s political funds stiU went to the German

^ Nuremberg Document (N.D.) EC440 Statement by Waither Funk.

* N.P., XIII, page 100. (Funk’s evidence.) * N.D. EC-440.

155

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

National Party, the Democrats and the People’s Party. The main support
for the Nazis came from a powerful group of coal and steel producers in
the Rhineland and Westphalia. In addition to Emil Kirdorf, the biggest
figure in the Ruhr coal industry, Fritz Thyssen and Albert Voegler of the
United Steel Works, Funk mentions Friedrich Springorum and Tengel-
mann, Ernest Buskiihl and H. G. Knepper of the Gelsenkirchen Mine
Company. Among bankers and financiers who, according to Funk,
met Hitler in 1931-1932 and, in some cases at least, helped him, were
Stein and Schroeder of the Stein Bank in Cologne; E. G. von Stauss,
of the Deutsche Bank; Hilgard, of the Allianz Insurance Corporation;
and two more bankers, Otto Christian Fischer and Fr. Reinhart.

Funk’s list is haphazard and is obviously not comprehensive. None
the less it gives some interesting clues to the sort of men Hitler was
beginning to meet and who were now interested to meet him, even if
these encounters did not always lead to such direct financial aid as in the
case of Thyssen. Besides the names already mentioned, Funk adds the
potash industry led by August Rosterg, of Kassel, and August Diehn;
shipping circles m Hamburg, of whom the most important was Cuno, of
the Hamburg- Amerika Line; Otto Wolf, a big Cologne industrialist
and business man who was friendly with Robert Ley, the local Gauleiter;
the brown coal industry of Central Germany — Deustche Erdoel, Brabag,
and the Anhaltische Kohlenwerke; and Dr. Erich Lubbert of the A.G.
fur Verkehrwesen and the Baugesellschaft Lenz.

There were, of course, others besides Funk who were interested in
bringing together Hitler and the men with money and influence. When
Dr. Schacht, the ex-President of the Reichsbank, first met Hitler in Janu-
* ary, 1931, it was at Goering’s flat, where he and Fritz Thyssen spent an
evening listening to Hitler talking. Goering was particularly active in
arranging such meetings; so was the Graf von Helldorf, who became the
S.A. leader in Berlin, Grauert, an influential figure in Diisseldorf as
manager of the Employers’ Association in the Rhineland and Westphalia,
with its large funds for strike-breaking, used his position to help the
Nazi cause, and was later rewarded with the post of Goering’s Under-
secretary in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Wilhelm Keppler,
another who aspired to be Hitler’s economic adviser, had wide connec-
tions, was friendly with Schroeder, the Cologne banker, and founded
Himmler’s private circle known by the pleasing name of Freundeskreis
der Wirtschaft, literally “Friends of the Economy.” Otto Dietrich, the
young journalist who introduced Hitler to Kirdorf and who became the
Party’s Press chief, writes in his memoirs, Mit Hitler in die Macht: “In
the summer of 1931 our Fuehrer suddenly decided to concentrate sys-
156

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

tematically on cultivating the influential economic magnates. ... In the
following months he traversed Germany from end to end, holding
private interviews with prominent personalities. Any rendezvous was
chosen, either in Berlin or in the provinces, in the Hotel Kaiserhof or in
some lonely forest-glade. Privacy was absolutely imperative, the Press
must have no chance of doing mischief. Success was the consequence.”^

How much all this produced in hard cash it is impossible to say. Funk
mentions three figures. In his interrogation at Nuremberg‘s he said that
during the elections of 1932, when the Party was short of money, he
asked directly for money: “in three or four cases where direct inter-
vention was sought, the total was approximately half a million marks.”
The second figure he gives is for the contributions of the important
Rhenish-Westphalian group in 1931-1932: during that period, he states
in his affidavit, they did not amount to one million marks. ’ Finally, when
he was asked to give a global figure for the support Hitler received from
industry in the period before he became Chancellor, Funk answered :
“In contrast to other parties, I don’t think that it was much more than a
couple of million marks.”'^

Thyssen’s memoirs, despite their title — IPaid Hitler ' — ^are disappoint-
ing, and add little to Funk’s evidence. Thyssen joined the Party openly in
December, 1931, and was responsible for the best known of all Hitler’s
meetings with industrialists, when he spoke to the Industry Club at
Diisseldorf in January, 1932.*' “I have,” he writes, “personally given
altogether one million marks to the Nazi Party. ... It was during the
last years preceding the Nazi seizure of power that the big industrial
corporations began to make their contributions. But they did not give
directly to Hitler; they gave them direct to Dr. Alfred Hugenberg, the
leader of the Nationalists, who placed at the disposal of the Nazi Party
about one-fifth of the amounts given. All in all, the amounts given by
heavy industry to the Nazis may be estimated at two million marks a
year.”' Unfortunately, it is not clear to what period Thyssen is referring.

Beyond such tantalizing and imprecise figures it is not yet possible to
go. But it IS easy to exaggerate the importance of these outside sub-
ventions, for the most important point of all is that Hitler, however much
he received from Kirdorf, Thyssen and the rest, was neither a pohtical

' Otto Dietrich: Mit Hitler in die Macht; English translation, With Hitler on the
Road to Power (London, 1934), pages 12-13.

* Dated 4 June and 26 June, 1945. N.D 2828-PS.

5 N.D EC-440. ■* N.D. 2828-PS.

® Fritz Thyssen: I Paid Hitler (London, 1941)

6 See below, pages 177-9. ’ Thyssen: pages 133-4.

157

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

puppet created by the capitalists, nor a mere agent of the big indus-
trialists who had lost his independence. Thyssen’s and Schacht’s
accounts are there as records of the disillusionment of those who
thought they had bought Hitler and would henceforward call the tune
he was to play. They were to discover, hke the conservative politicians
and the generals, that, contrary to the popular behef, bankers and
business men are too innocent for politics when it is played by a man
like Hitler.

In speaking of the Nazi movement as a “party” there is a danger of
mistaking its true character. For the Nazi Party was no more a party,
in the normal democratic sense of that word, than the Communist Party
is today; it was an organized conspiracy against the State. The Party’s
programme was important to win support, and, for psychological
reasons which Hitler discussed quite frankly in Mein Kampf, the pro-
gramme had to be kept unalterable and never allowed to become a
subject for discussion. But the attitude of the leaders towards the
programme was entirely opportunist. For them, as for most of the old
Party members, the real object was to get their hands on the State. They
were the Catilines of a new revolution, the gutter elite, avid for power,
position and wealth; the sole object of the Party was to secure power by
one means or another.

The existence of such an organization was in fact incompatible with
the safety of the Republic. No State could tolerate the threat which it
implied, if it was resolved to remain master in its own house. Why then
were no effective steps taken by the German Government to arrest the
leaders of the Nazi Party and break up their organization? As Dr. Kemp-
ner has shown, recommendations to this effect, with legal grounds for the
action proposed, were submitted by the police authorities to the Reich
Attorney-General even before the Nazis’ electoral triumph of September,
1930.^ Yet no action was taken.

In the case of Dr. Kempner’s police report, the Reich Attorney-
General was a crypto-Nazi who used his office to prevent any action
being taken. This in itself is a significant enough sidelight on the state

^ The Mi text of the Police Report prepared by Dr. Kempner in the Pohee Division
of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior m 1 930 has been reprinted by him m Research
Studies of the State College of Washington (vol. XIII, No. 2, June, 1945), pages
56-130. It IS accompanied by his correspondence with the Reich Attorney-General,
pages 131-4

158

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

of affairs in Germany in 1930-1933, but it is not a sufficient answer
to the more general question. If the people in authority in Germany at
this time had been really determined to smash the Nazi movement
they would have found the means. The question to be asked is, why
they lacked the will and the determination. To this there are not one, but
several answers.

In the first place, Hitler’s tactics of legality were designed to enable
him to win the maximum advantage from the democratic constitution
of the Weimar Republic. Thereby he avoided giving his opponents the
chance of shifting the fight for power on to a level where the Army would
be the decisive factor. As Hiller was shrewd enough to realize, he would
be the loser, not the gainer, in any attempt to resort to force, whereas
so long as he kept within the letter of the law he could fetter the
authorities with their own slow-moving legal processes.

In May, 1931, four National Socialists were brought for trial after a
shooting affair with some Communists. Hitler was called upon to give
evidence. “I have never left any doubt,” he declared, “that I demanded
from the S.A. men the strict observance of the path of legality, and, if
this veto on illegality was anywhere violated, then the leaders concerned
have always been brought to account. . . . Acts of violence have never
been contemplated by our Party, nor has the individual S.A. man ever
wished for them. ... We stand absolutely as hard as granite on the
ground of legality.”^ In December, 1931, Hitler again underlined the
importance he attached to keeping within the law by a proclamation
to the S.A. and S.S. in which he assured them that victory was certain,
if they remained true to the policy of legality. They were not to allow
themselves to be provoked. “He who fails in the last days of his test is
not worthy to witness victory.”'^

In the second place, so long as the challenge to the authority of the
Stale remained latent and was camouflaged by fair words, there was a
strong temptation for any government in Germany in 1931 and 1932
not to add to its difficulties. For throughout the winter of 1930-1931
the economic crisis, far from lifting, bore down more heavily upon the
German people. The figures for registered unemployment, which, in
September, 1930, had stood at three millions, mounted to four and three-
quarter millions at the end of March, 1931. The financial crisis reached
its peak in July, 1931, when, following the failure of Austria’s greatest
banking institution the Kreditanstalt, and an unprecedented flight of
capital from Germany, the Darmstadt and National Bank (the Danai).

^ 8 May, 1931, Baynes: vol. I, pages 163-4

® Ibid.: vol. I, page 178, quoting the Fiankfurter Zeitung for 3 December, 1931.

159

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

ine of the three big joint-stock banks in Germany, had to close its doors
nd suspend payment. When the British Ambassador returned to Berlin
in 16 July he wrote: “I was much struck by the emptiness of the streets
nd the unnatural silence hanging over the city, and particularly by an
tmosphere of extreme tension similar in many respects to that which I
ibserved in Berlin in the critical days immediately preceding the war.”^

With help from abroad the threat of financial collapse was staved off,
)ut the measures taken by the Bruening Government — heavy additional
axation, cuts in official salaries and wage rates, the reduction of unem-
iloyment benefits— while imposing considerable sacrifices on the people,
vere insufficient to enable the Government to master the crisis. In such
arcumstances Hiller found no difficulty in laying the blame for all the
iconomic distress of the country on the Government’s policy, par-
icularly as Germany was still saddled with reparation payments, and
he worsening of the crisis in the summer of 1931 had been partly
3ccasioned by a stinging rebuff in foreign policy.

In March, 1931, the German Foreign Minister, in an effort to alleviate
■he effects of the slump in Central Europe, put forward the proposal of an
Austro-German Customs Union. Whatever the economic arguments
in favour of such a step, France, supported by Italy and Czechoslovakia,
had taken this to be a move towards the political and territorial union of
Austria with Germany which was expressly forbidden by the Treaties of
Versailles and St. Germain. She had promptly mobilized her financial
as well as her diplomatic resources to prevent it. The measures taken
by the French proved effective: they not only helped to precipitate the
failure of the Austrian Kreditanstalt and the German financial crisis of
the summer, but forced the German Foreign Minister to announce on
3 September that the project was being abandoned. The result was to
inflict a sharp humiliation on the Bruening Government and to inflame
national resentment in Germany.

Hitler was not slow to point the lesson: so long as Germany continued
to be ruled by the present system she would continue to suffer economic
misery at home and contemptuous insults abroad. Two years before
Gregor Strasser had written in the Nationalsozialistische Briefe: “Every-
thing that is detrimental to the existing order has our support — We are
promoting catastrophic policies — ^for only catastrophe, that is, the
collapse of the liberal system, will clear the way for the new order. ... All
that serves to precipitate the catastrophe of the ruling system — every
strike, every governmental crisis, every disturbance of the State power,
every weakening of the System — is good, very good for us and our Ger-

^ Documents on British Foreign Policy, 2n<i senes, vol. 11, No. 225,

1CO

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

man revolution.”^ The Nazis were now beginning to garner the harvest
of their policy of catastrophe.

Faced with such difficulties, both in domestic and foreign policy, any
government was likely to hesitate before adding to its problems by the
uproar which the suppression of the Nazi Party, the second largest m the
Reichstag, would inevitably have entailed, so long as Hitler was clever
enough to avoid any flagrant act of illegality. For the Bruening Ministry
lacked the support to play the role of a strong government. The Chan-
cellor’s appeal for national unity had failed, and the elections of Sep-
tember, 1930, far from producing a stable parliamentary basis for
Bruening’s policy, had only multiplied the strength of the two extremist
parties, the Nazis and the Communists. Bruening was only able to
continue governing Germany after the elections because the Social
Democrats, alarmed at the growing political and economic crisis, gave
him unofficial support in the Reichstag, and the President of the
Republic continued to use his emergency powers under Article 48 to
sign the necessary decrees. The refusal of the German parties to sink
their differences, unite in face of the emergency and jointly assume
responsibility for the unpopular measures which had to be taken, drove
Bruening into a dangerous dependence on support outside the Reichstag,
upon the support of the President and the support of the Army. The atti-
tude of both towards the Nazis was equivocal. Here was the third reason
for the reluctance to take action against the Nazis.

From the beginning of 1930, General Greener, the Minister of
Defence, a man of integrity and experience, had been uneasily conscious •
that a good many members of the Officer Corps were becoming sympa-
thetic to the Nazis. The Leipzig Trial of Lieutenants Ludin and Scherin-
ger, and the storm of criticism to which he had been subjected for
allowing the trial to take place at all, showed that Hitler’s propaganda
directed at the Anny had been far from unsuccessful. After the elections
of September, 1930, the British Military Attach6 reported that the
officers he had met on the autumn manoeuvres were deeply impressed
by the growth of National Socialism. ‘Tt is the Jugendbewegung (Youth
Movement),” they said; “it can’t be stopped.”- Professor Meinecke
records that the attitude of Army officers was summed up in the phrase:
“What a pity it would be to have to fire on these splendid youths in the
S. A.”^ The nationalist appeal of Nazi propaganda and its promise of a

^ NS. Biiefe, No 23, June, 1929, quoted m the Police Report of 1930 Kerapner-
pages 97-8.

“ Bnt. Doc., 2nd senes, vol. I, page 512, no»“

® Friedrich Meinecke: Die deutsche Katastrophe (Wiesbaden, 1947), page 71.

LH. — r 161

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

powerful Germany with an expanded Army were beginning to have
their effect.

The Army could still be relied on to support Bruening if Hitler attemp-
ted to make a putsch. “It is a complete mistake to ask where the Army
stands,” Groener told his friend, Meinecke. “ The Army will do what it
is ordered to do, wtd damit Basic — ^and that’s that.”^ To General von
Gieich, Groener wrote that, if Hitler resorted to force, he would meet
“the unqualified employment of the resources of the State. The Army
is so completely in our hands that it will never hesitate in this eventu-
ality.”" In an article published since the war Dr. Bruening confirms this.
In the autumn of 1931 he writes: “the two generals (von Schleicher
and von Hammerstein) and myself were fully agreed that, if the
Nazis imitated Mussolini’s March on Rome the Army would make
short work of them. ... We also expected that we would finally get
Hindenburg’s consent to the immediate suppression of the Nazi Party,
if they resorted to open revolt.”*

But it was not at all certain that the Government would be able to
count on the support of the Army if it was a question of suppressing the
Nazi Party without the pretext of revolt. Once again the cleverness of
Hitler’s tactics of legality was demonstrated. Groener, who never
wavered in his dislike and contempt for Nazism, hesitated to take
action against the Party, even after he had become Minister of the
Interior as well as Minister of Defence (October, 1931). Later he admitted
to Mcinecke; “We ought to have suppressed them by force.”* But at the
time Groener was too unsure of feeling in the Army to risk action, at
least until Bruening should have secured the agreement of the other
Powers to the creation of a German conscript militia, which would
reassure those officers who looked to the S.A. as an Army reserve in
case of war, and draw away the young men attracted by the militarist
propaganda of the Nazis.

The President, Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, was now a very old
man, eighty-four in October, 1931, and such political judgment as he had
ever had was failing. What he cared about most of all was the German
Army in which he had spent his life. Between the President and the Army

’ Mciiii’cle. piigcs

® Groener Correspondenee, 26 Jdruaiy, 1932, quoted by Gordon A Craig: The
Reichswehr and Naticnai SiiciaLsm, Political Science Quaimiy, \oi. LXIII No 2
(Jiiiic, 194SK page 210.

® Heinrich Bruimng. Bin BrieB in Deutsche Runduhau, July, 1947 This post-’war
'irrAimt hv Dr- Biuemiai; should be compared with^the version of events given m

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

there existed, as Professor Memecke says, “relations of mutual depen-
dence. The Reichswehr obeyed him, but he listened to it. He absorbed
into his mind and spirit everything to which it was sensitive. He was
flesh and blood of its flesh and blood, an off-shoot of that Prusso-
German militarism which had produced so many first-rate technical
and so few politically far-sighted heads.”^ Faithfully reflecting opinion
in the Army, Hindenburg too was opposed to the use of force against the
Nazis. He would only agree to it if theie was some unequivocal act of
rebellion on their part or if at the same time action were taken against
the other extremist party, the Communists,-

More important still than the opinion of either General Groener or
President Hindenburg was that of Major-General Kurt von Schleicher,
who, by 1930-1932, had made himself virtually the authoritative voice
of the Army in politics. General Schleicher was that curiosity in the Ger-
man Army, a General Staff Officer — able, charming and ambitious —
who was more interested in politics than in war. Fifteen years younger
than Groener, he had risen rapidly from one Staff appointment to
another until Groener became Minister of Defence in 1928 — partly
thanks to Schleicher’s efforts on his behalf— and made Schleicher the
head of a new department in his Ministry, the Ministeramt. This was to
handle all matters common to both the Army and Navy and to act as
liaison between the armed services and other ministries. Schleicher used
the key position created for him to make himself one of the most
powerful political figures in Germany. Both Groener and the C. in. C.
of the Army, General von Hammerstein, were under his influence.
Through the fortunate chance of an old friendship with the President’s ,
son, Colonel Oskar von Hindenburg, he had an entree to the old man,
who listened and was impressed by what he said. Indeed it was Schleicher
who had first proposed Bruening’s name to the President in 1930 and
had overcome Bruening’s own objections to serving as Chancellor. In
dealing with his brother officers Schleicher had the advantage of quick-
ness and self-confidence in political matters, where they were hesitant
and diffident. In dealing with politicians he had the indefinable advantage
in German politics of being a general, not a civilian, and of being able to
claim that he represented the views of the Army in a country where the
Army took precedence over every other institution as the supreme
embodiment of the national tradition.

Schleicher’s object was to secure a strong government which, in place
of coalitions spending their energy in political horse-dealing and com-

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Army being forced to intervene to put down revolution. He believed
he had found the answer in Bruening, whose cabinet was made up of
men from several parties, without being based upon a coalition, and
who, with the promise of the President’s emergency powers at his dis-
posal, could follow a firm policy without having to truckle too much to
the parlies m the Reichstag. But the appeal Bruening made over
the heads of the parties to the German people at the elections of Sep-
tember, 1930, had failed. It was not Bruening but the two extremist
parlies which had won the votes, and Schleicher’s anxieties revived.
“The load which constantly weighed on General Schleicher’s mind,”
Bruening writes, “was the fear, based on the experience of 1923, that
Nazi and Communist uprisings might break out simultaneously and thus
give foi eign powers an opportunity to extend their borders still further
at Germany’s expense.”^ In particular he feared an attack by Poland,
if the (jcrman Army should be fully occupied in dealing with simul-
taneous Nazi and Communist risings.

Schltacher, therefore, shared fully — ^and was partly responsible for —
the relictance of Groener and Hindenburg to take any initiative against
the Nazis. But Schleicher went further: impressed by the Nazi success
at the elections and by their nationalist programme, Schleicher began to
pluy with the idea of, somehow or other, winning Hitler’s support for
Brueni'ig and converting the Nazi movement with its mass following into
a prop of the existing government, instead of a battering ram directed
against iL lletc was an attractne alternative to that of using the Army
to supjiress the Nazis; it might e\en be possible to bring them into a
_ coalition government in winch they would be forced to share the respon-
sib.lity for the unpopular measures which w'ould have to be taken

It was in this direction that Schleicher began to look during 1931 for
a way uul of the political deadlock. It took time for his ideas to mature,
but he made a beginning by removing the old causes of quarrel between
the .A.rmy and the Na/i Party. The ban on the Army’s employment of
National Socialists in arsenals and supply depots and the prohibition
of Nazi enlistment m the .'krmy were removed in January, 1931. In
return Hitler reaffirmed his adherence to the policy of legality by an
order (dated 20 February, 1931) forbidding the SA to take part in
street-fighting. During the succeeding months Schleicher had several
talks with Roehm, eager as always to work with the Army, as well as
with Gregor Strasser. By the latter half of 1931 he was ready to try to

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

term of office expired in 1932 — as a first step to drawmg the Nazis into
support of the Government and taming their revolutionary ardour.

Nothing could have suited Hitler better. For a year after the great
success he had won at the September elections of 1930 Hitler was still
no nearer attaining office. He had built up a remarkable organization,
the strength of which grew steadily, but the question remained how
was he to change the success he had won into the hard coin of political
power.

The two most obvious ways by which men come to supreme power in
the State— apart from conquest m war— are by force, i.e., by revolution,
or by consent, i.e., by an electoral majority. The first of these Hitler
himself ruled out, but the second never became a practical alternative.
At the height of their success in the elections of July, 1932, when they
won 230 out of 608 seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis were never in sight
of a clear majority. Even in the elections held after Hitler had come to
power, the elections of March, 1933, they obtained no more than 288
out of 647 seats.

One way of adding to the Nazi vote was to combine with Hugenberg’s
German National Party. On 9 July, 1931, Hitler and Hugenberg met in
Berlin and issued a statement to the effect that they would henceforward
co-operate for the overthrow of the existing “System.” The first fruit of
this alliance, which had produced the plebiscite against the Young Plan
in 1929, was another plebiscite m August, 1931, this time demanding a
dissolution of the Diet in Prussia, by far the most important of the Ger-
man states, in which power was exercised by a coalition of the hated
Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre Party. Even with the support*
of the Communist vote, which was flung against the rival working-class
party of the Social Democrats, the two Right-wing parties, however,
secured no more than thirty-seven per cent of the votes and promptly
proceeded to blame each other for the failure. Alliance with the Nation-
alists, with their strongly upper-class character, was in fact a dubious
policy for the Nazis, bound to lead to much discontent in the radical
wing of the Party. Although Hitler continued to make intermittent use
of the Nationalist alliance, it was with reluctance and misgivings, for
limited purposes only, when no other course presented itself.

Yet the only justification of the course of legality was success. It would
not be possible to hold the precarious balance between legality and
illegality indefinitely. As General Groener remarked: “Despite all the
declarations of legality . . . such an organization has its dynamic in itself

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Img in the S.A. at Hitler’s policy again found a focus m Berlin and a
revolt, which had contacts with Otto Strasser’s revolutionary Black
Front, was planned by Walter Stennes, a former police captain and the
leader of the S.A. for the whole of Eastern Germany. An immediate
grievance was Hitler’s order of 20 February, ordering the S.A. to refrain
from street-fights. Hitler intervened at the beginning of April, 1931,
before the revolt had got under way, threw out Stennes and replaced
him by one of the most notorious of Rossbach’s former Freikorps men,
Edmund Heines, who had already served a turn of imprisonment for
murder and whom Hitler himself had expelled from the Party in 1927.
This was, however, the second S.A. mutiny in Berlin in seven months,
and it was noticeable that Stennes, instead of making his peace with
Hiller, denounced him and joined forces with Otto Strasser.

If Hitler was to carry his policy of legality to success it could only be
done in one way, a possibility created by the peculiar system under
which Germany was now governed. From the breakdown of the
coalition headed by Herman Mueller in 1930, Bruening, his successor
as Chancellor (and Bruening’s own successor, Papen), had both to
govern without being able to find a stable parliamentary majority
or to win an election. The use of the President’s emergency powers,
upon which they relied to issue decrees, placed great power in the
hands of the President and his advisers; in effect, political power in
Germany was transferred from the nation to the little group of men
round the President. The most important members of this group
were General von Schleicher; Oskar von Hindenburg; Otto Meissner,
the head of the Presidential Chancery; Bruening and, after his loss of
favour, Papen, Bruening’s successor as Chancellor. If Hitler could
persuade these men to take him into partnership and make him Chan-
cellor, with the right to use the President’s emergency powers — a
presidential, as opposed to a parliamentary, government — ^then he could
dispense with the clear electoral majority which still eluded him and with
the risky experiment cf a putsch

At first sight nothing appeared more improbable than such a deal.
Yet neither Schleicher nor the President was at all satisfied with the
existing situation. They did not believe that the President’s emergency
powers could be made into a permanent basis for governing the country.
They were looking for a government which, while prepared to take
resolute action to deal with the crisis, would also be able to win mass
support in the country, and, if possible, secure a majority in the Reich-
stag. Bruening had failed to win such a majority at the elections.

166

THE YEARS OF WAITING, 1924-1931

Schleicher, therefore, began to look elsewhere for the mass suppo
which he felt to be necessary for the presidential government.

With six million votes Hitler was a possibility worth considering. Fc
Hitler had two assets, both of which counted with the General. The Na:
success at the elections was a promise of the support Hitler would t
able to provide, if he was bought in. The organized violence of the S.^
was a threat of the revolution he might make if he were left out. Hitler
game, therefore, from 1931 to 1933 was to use the revolution he w£
unwilling to make and the mass support he was unable to turn into
majority, the first as a threat, the second as a promise, to persuade th
President and his advisers to take him into partnership and give hii
power.

This is the key to the complicated and tortuous political moves of th
period between the autumn of 1931 and 30 January, 1933, when the gam
succeeded and Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor-
legally. The milestones on the path of the Nazi Party to power betwee
these two dates are the successive negotiations between the little grou
of men who bore the responsibility for the experiment of presidentii
government and the Nazi leaders. Hitler did not at the time see this f
the only means by which he could come to power legally. He continue
to speculate on the possibility of a coalition with the Nationalists— eve
at one time with the Centre — or, better still, on the chances of winnin
an outright majority at the next elections. Each time the negotiatior
broke down he turned again to these alternatives. Yet each time h
gives the impression that his eye is always on a resumption of negot
ations, and that the measures he takes are designed primarily to pi
pressure on the other side to begin talks again rather than to bring hii
into office by other means.

Years ago, in Vienna, Hitler had admired the tactics of Knrl Luegi
and had summed them up in two sentences in Mein Kampf: “In his pol
tical activity, Lueger attached the main importance to winning ov(
those classes whose threatened existence tended to stimulate rather tha
paralyse their wiO to fight. At the same time he took care to avail himse
of all the instruments of authority at his disposal, and to bring powerfi
existing institutions over to his side, in order to gain from these wel
tried sources of power the greatest possible advantage for his ow
movement.”^ Hitler was well on the way to “winning over those classi
whose existence was threatened”; now he faced the task of “bringin
powerful existing institutions over to his side,” above all the Army an
the President. The years of waiting were at an end.

^ Mem Kampf, page 95.

167

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

October, 1931—30 January, 1933

T HE FIRST CONTACTS BETWEEN Hitler and the men who disposed of
power in Germany were scarcely auspicious. At the beginning of the
autumn of 1931 Schleicher had a meeting with Hitler, arranged with
Roehm’s help, and subsequently persuaded both the Chancellor and the
President to see him. Bruening received the Nazi leader, accompanied by
Goering, at the home of one of his Ministers, Treviranus.

What Bruening asked for was Hitler’s support until the reparations
question was settled and Hindenburg re-elected as President. After this
had been accomplished he was willing to retire and allow someone else
more acceptable to the parties of the Right to take his place. Instead of
giving a direct answer. Hitler launched into a monologue, the main point
of which was that when he came to power he would not only get rid of
Germany’s debts but would rearm and, with England and Italy as his
allies, force France to her knees. He failed to impress either the Chan-
'cellor or Treviranus, and the meeting ended inconclusively, neither
Hider nor Hugenberg (whom Bruening saw about the same time) being
willing to bind themselves.

The interview with the President on 10 October was the first occasion
on which the two men had met. Hitler was nervous and ill-at-ease; his
niece, Gcli Raubal, with whom he was in love, had committed suicide
three weeks before,^ and he had wired to Goermg, who was at the bed-
side of his dying wife in Sweden, to return and accompany him. Nazi
accounts of the meeting are singularly reticent,- but Hitler obviously
made the mistake of talking loo much and trying to impress the old man
with his demagogic arts; instead he bored him. Hindenburg is said to
have grumbled to Schleicher afterwards that he was a queer fellow who
would never make a Chancellor, but, at most, a Minister of Posts.

‘ See below, Chaptci Seven

“Cf , eg, Gerhard Schultze-Pfaelzer. Hindenburg und Hitler zur Fuhiung vereint
(Berlin, 1933), pages 114-5.

168

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

Altogether it was a bad week for Hitler. The day aftei his interview
with the President he took part in a great demonstration of the Right-
wing “National” opposition at Harzburg, a little watering-place in the
Harz Mountains Hugenberg, representing the Nationalists; Seldte and
Duesterberg, the leaders of the Stahlhelm; Dr. Schacht and General von
Seeckt; Graf Kalkreuth, the president of the Junkers’ Land League, and
half a score of figures from the Ruhr and Rhineland industries, all joined
m passing a solemn resolution uniting the parties of the Right. They
demanded the immediate resignation of Bruening’s Government and of
the Braun Ministry in Prussia, followed by new elections m both the
Reich and Prussia. Hiller only agreed to take part in the Rally with great
reluctance, and Frick felt obliged to defend the decision to the Nazi
contingent with a speech in which he said openly that they were only
using the Nationalists as a convenient ladder to office, just as Mussolini
had begun with a coalition and later got rid of his allies. The whole
atmosphere irritated Hitler. He felt oppressed by his old lack of self-
confidence m face of all these frock-coats, top-hats, Army uniforms and
formal titles. This was the Reaktion on parade, and the great radical
Tribune was out of place. To add to his irritation, the Stahlhelm arrived
in much greater numbers than the S.A., and Hugenberg and Seldte stole
the limelight Hitler declined to take part in the official procession, read
his speech m a perfunctory fashion, and left before the Stahlhelm
marched past. The united front of the National Opposition had virtually
collapsed before it was established. The fight between the rival Right-
wing parties, and the rival party armies, Stahlhelm and S.A., continued
unabated, despite the bitter complaints of the Nationalist and Stahlhelm*
leaders at the Nazis’ uncomradely conduct.^

Two days later, on 13 October, Bruening presented to the Reichstag a
reconstituted government in which General Groener, the Minister of
Defence — at Schleicher’s suggestion — took over the Ministry of the
Interior, and the Chancellor himself became Foreign Minister. In face of
the Nationalists’ and Nazis’ demands for his resignation, Bruening
appeared to be taking on a new lease of political life, with renewed proofs
of the support of the Army and the President.

Hitler expressed his frustration and fury at the course of events in an
open letter to the Chancellor (published on 14 October) in which he
attacked the policy of the Government as a disastrous betrayal of

' See the collection of acrimonious letters between Hitler, Roehm and the Stahl-
helm leaders, dating from October-December, 1931, and printed verbatim in Th.
Duesterberg: Der Stahlhelm utd Hitler (Wolfenbuttel, 1949), pages 15-33.

H.L — F'

169

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Germaa kterests, adding a stinging postscript for the benefit of Generals
Groener and von Schleicher:

The most regrettable feature of all is that the last instrument which is still
sound in its general outlook — the instrument on which you alone can stiU
today rely for support— -the Army— is now involved through its representa-
tives in the Government directly and indirectly in these struggles. . . . For us
the Army is the expression of the strength of the nation for the defence of its
national interests abroad. For you, Herr Chancellor Braining, it is in the
last resort an institution for the defence of the Government at home. The
triumph of our ideas will give the entire nation a political and philosophi-
cal outlook which will bring the Army in spirit into a truly close relation-
ship to the whole people and will thus free it from the painful circumstance
of being an alien body within its own people. The consequence of your
view, Herr Chancellor, will be an obligation on the part of the Army to
uphold a political system which in its traditions and inmost views is the
deadly opponent of the spirit of an army. And so finally, whether deliberately
or not, the Army will be stamped with the character of a police-troop
designed more or less for internal purposes.”^

Having delivered this broadside. Hitler went off on 17 October to
Brunswick, where more than a hundred thousand S.A. and S.S. men
tramped past the saluting base for six hours, and tlte thundering cheers
mollified his wounded vanity. Thirty-eight special trains and five
thousand lorries brought the Brown Shirts pouring into Brunswick.
Hitler presented twenty-four new standards, and at night a great torch-
light parade lighted up the countryside. This was a show the like of
which neither Hugenberg and the Slahlhelm nor the Government could
‘ put on: while they continued to talk of the need for popular support,
Hitler already had it.

The first attempt to initiate negotiations had broken down, but the
failure was not irremediable. Events continued to flow m Hitler’s favour.
In December, 1931, the figure of registered unemployment passed the
five-million mark. On 8 December the President signed new emergency
decrees making further reductions in wages, prices and interest rates,
together with an increase in taxation. It was a grim winter in Germany.
Bruening described his measures as unequalled in the demands they
made on the German people, yet all he could do was to hold on in the
hope that, with the spring, the Depression might begin to lessen in
severity. Then he might be able to negotiate the end of reparations
(which were already suspended) and secure some satisfaction of Ger-

^ Hitler’s open letter, published together with other letters exchanged with Dr.
Bruomng, m a Nazi pamphlet' Hulets Ausemandersetzung nut Biumng (MunicL
1932), pages 35-36.

170

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

many’s demands from the Disarmament Conference due to meet in the
coming year. This was poor comfort, however, to a people suffering
from the prmiitive misery of hunger, cold, lack of work and lack of
hope. Nor was Bruening, with his aloof and reserved manner, the man
to put across a programme of sacrifice and austerity.

By contrast, the Nazis gained steadily in strength. Their membership
of 389,000 at the beginning of 1931 rose to more than 800,000 at the end
of the year. Following their success in the Oldenburg provincial elections
in May (over thirty-seven per cent of the votes), and at Hamburg in
September, the Nazis swept the board at the Hessian elections in
November.^ They more than doubled the votes they had won in Hesse
during the Reichstag elections of September, 1930, and pushed up their
numbers in the Diet from one to twenty-seven deputies. Their average
vote for the eight most recent provincial elections was thirty-five per
cent, compared with the eighteen per cent which had given them over
six million votes in the national elections of September, 1930. The
threat and the promise were gaining in weight.

These facts were not lost on General von Schleicher, who continued
his talks with Hitler in November and December. Schleicher was more
and more impressed with the need to bring Hitler into the game and
make use of him. The French Military Attache in Berlin, Colonel
Chapouilly, reported on 4 November, 1931: “la Schleicher’s view,
Hitler knows very well how to distinguish between the demagogy
suitable to a young Party, and the needs of national and international
life. He has already moderated the actions of his troops on more than
one occasion, and one can secure more from him. Faced with the forces ,
he controls, there is only one policy to adopt— to use him and win him
over, foreseeing with some reason the loss of the revolutionary wing of
his party.” ' Under the influence of Schleicher, even Groener — so Pro-
fessor Memecke records" — resigned himself during the winter to the idea
of compromising with the Nazis and bringing individual National
Socialists into the Government.

^ There were seventeen states in Germany, of the most remarkable diversity in
size and power. Pmssia (thirty-eight millions); Bavaria (seven millions); Saxony
(five millions); Wiirtteraberg and Baden (each over two millions); Tharingia, Hesse
and Hamburg (a million to a imllion and a half each); Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
Oldenburg and Brunswick (over half a million); Anhalt and Bremen (a third of a
milhon); Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Lippe, Lubeck (ranging from 110,000 to 163,000j;
and Schaumburg-Lippe (48,000).

® Quoted by G. Castellan. Von Schleicher, von Papen et Pavene/nent de Hitler in
Cahieis d’Histone de la Guetre, Pubhcation du Comite d’Ristoire de la Guerre
(Pans No. 1, January, 1949), page 18.

“ Memecke: page 74.

171

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Hitler meanwhile kept up the attack on Bruening as the embodiment
of all the evils of the “System” by which Germany had been governed
since 1918. He answered Bruening’s broadcast of 8 December, in which
the Chancellor explained and defended his new decrees, with another
open letter (published 13 December, 1931). Bruening’s appeal for
national unity and an end of factious criticism he met with the retort
that there was still freedom of speech in Germany. “You yourself, Herr
Chancellor, jealously see to it that only the Government is permitted
liberty of action in Germany; and thus there arises of necessity the

limitation of the opposition to the sphere of criticism, of speech The

Government, Herr Chancellor, can act. It can prove the rightness of its
I'lews by deeds And it takes jealous care that no one else shall enjoy
such possibilities. What then, Herr Chancellor, remains for us but
speech, to bring to the knowledge of the German nation our views on
the ruinous character of your plans, or the errors which underlie them,
and the disasters which must ensue ?”^

This letter is interesting for a frank statement by Hitler of what he
meant by legality. In his broadcast Bruening had said. “When a man
declares that once he has achieved power by legal means he will break
through the barriers, he is not really adhering to legality.”- Hitler re-
plied: “You refuse, as a ‘statesman,’ to admit that if we come to power
legally we could then break through legality. Herr Chancellor, the
fundamental thesis of democracy runs: ‘All power issues from the
People.’ The constitution lays down the way by which a conception,
an idea, and therefore an organization, must gain from the people the
^legitimation for the realization of its aims. But in the last resort it is the
People itself which determines its Constitution.

“Herr Chancellor, if the German nation once empowers the National
Socialist Movement to introduce a Constitution other than that which
we have today, then you cannot stop it. . . . When a Constitution proves
itself to be useless for its life, the nation does not die — the Constitution
is altered.”*

Here was a plain enough warning of what Hiller meant to do when he
got power, yet Schleicher, Papen and the rest were so sure of their own
ability to manage this ignorant agitator that they only smiled and took
no notice.

Bruening had fewer illusions, but all his plans depended upon being
able to hold out until economic conditions improved, or he could

‘ Hitlers Auseinandei setzung nut Bitinmg, pages 49-51 I have used the translation
of this passage in Biyties. vol 1, pages 496-7

- Ibid , page 45 Biuemng's bioadeast of 8 December, 1931.

' Ibid , page 56.

THE MONTHS OF OPPOXTUNITY

secure some success in foreign policy. His ability to do this depended in
turn upon the re-election of Hindenburg as President at the end of his
term of office. This was a considerable risk to take, as Hindenburg was
eighty-four and failing in health, yet Bruening believed that he could
rely on Hindenburg to support him and continue to sign the decrees he
laid before him. The old man was reluctant to go on, and only agreed
when the Chancellor promised to try to secure an agreement with the
Party leaders in the Reichstag which would provide the two-thirds
majority necessary to prolong the presidential term of office without
re-election. In any case, a bitter electoral contest for the Presidency at
such a time was something to be avoided. And so Bruening, too, agreed
to further negotiations with Hitler in order to win him over to his plan.

Hitler was m Munich, in the offices of the Volkischer Beobachter,
when the summons came. A telegram was brought in to him as he stood
talking to Hess, Rosenberg and Wilhelm Weiss, one of the editors.
When he read it he is reported to have purred with satisfaction and
crashed his fist down on the telegram in exultation; “Now I have them
in my pocket. They have recognized me as a partner in their negotia-
tions.”^

The talks took place early in the New Year, 1932. Hitler saw General
Groener on 6 January, Bruening and Schleicher on the 7th. Further con-
ferences followed on the 10th, at which Hitler was accompanied, as
before, by Roehm. Bruening’s proposal was substantially the same as in
the previous autumn : Hitler was asked to agree to a prolongation of
Hindenburg’s presidency for a year or two, until the country had begun
its economic recovery and the issues of reparations and the German
claim to equality of rights in armaments had been settled. In return,
Bruening renewed his offer to resign as soon as he had settled the
question of reparations. According to some accounts,- although this is
omitted by others and neither confirmed nor denied by Dr. Bruening
himself, the Chancellor added that he would then suggest Hitler’s name
to the President as Chancellor.

Hitler asked for time to consider his reply and withdrew to the Kaiser-
hof, the big hotel m the Wilhelmstrasse, opposite the Reich Chancellery
and the Presidential Palace, where he had made his headquarters.
Hugenberg, who was also consulted by the Chancellor, as leader of the
Nationalists, was strongly opposed to prolonging Hindenburg’s term of
office, arguing that it could only strengthen Bruening’s position.

^ Heiden* Dei Fueher, page 342*

^ E g., Heiden. History of National Socialism, page 151; Benoist-Mechra: Histoire
de PArmee allemmde, voL 11, page 426.

173

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Goebbels took the same view. In his diary he wrote: “The Presidency is
not really in question. Bruening only wants to stabilize his own position
indefinitely. . . . The contest for power, the game of chess, has begun.
It may last throughout the year. It will be a fast game, played with
intelligence and skill. The main point is that we hold fast, and waive all
compromise.”^ Two opposing arguments had to be weighed against
each other. Gregor Strasser’s view was that Hindenburg would be un-
beatable in any election the Nazis might force on the Government, and
that it was in the Party’s interests to accept a temporary truce. But
Roehm as well as Goebbels argued that it would be a fatal mistake for
the Party to appear to avoid a chance to go to the nation, especially after
the recent successes in the provincial elections. Long and anxious
debates followed among the Nazi leaders. In the end Roehm’s point of
view was accepted.

Hugenberg’s reply to Bruening’s proposal, on behalf of the Nation-
alists, was delivered on 12 January, 1932, and contained a blank refusal.
Hitler also rejected it, but tried to drive a wedge between Chancellor and
President. He did this by writing direct to the President over Bruening’s
head, warning him that the Chancellor’s plan was an infringement
of the Constitution; adding, however, that he himself was willing to
support Hindenburg’s re-election if the President would repudiate
Bruening’s proposal. To Meissner, whom he invited to a conference at
the Kaiserhof as the President’s representative. Hitler offered to make
Hindenburg the joint presidential candidate of the Nazis and the
Nationalists if the old man would agree to dismiss Bruening, form a
^Right-wing “National” government and hold new elections for the
Reichstag and the Prussian Diet.- The newly elected Reichstag, in which
Hitler was confident of a majority for the Nazi and Nationalist parties,
would then proceed to prolong his term of ofiice.

When this manoeuvre broke down on Hindenburg’s refusal. Hitler
launched a violent attack on Bruening in two more open letters, dated
15 and 25 January, the second being an answer to Bruening’s reply.
Hitler repeated the charge that Bruening was proposing to violate the
Constitution in order to keep himself in power, and declared that the
Reichstag elected in 1930 was not competent to prolong Hindenburg’s
term of office, since it no longer represented the German people. When
Bruening in turn accused Hitler of playing party politics at the expense
of Germany’s chances of improving her international position. Hitler

’ Josef Goebbels Votn Kaimhof zur Reichkanzki English tianslation b>
Kurt Fiedler' My Part in Germany's Fight (London, 1935), pages 16-17.

‘ Otto Meissnci Stoatssekretar (Hamburg, 1950), pages 216-7

174

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

retorted that nothing could be more beneficial to German foreign policy
than the overthrow of the “System” by which Germany had been
governed since 1918. “It would never have come to a Treaty of Ver-
sailles, if the parties which support you— the Centre, the Social Demo-
crats and the Democrats— had not undermined, destroyed and betrayed
the old Reich, if they had not prepared and carried through the Revolu-
tion (of 1918) or at least accepted and defended it.”^

After this exchange any hopes of avoiding an election for the presi-
dency were at an end. For a second time the attempt to do a deal with
Hitler had failed. Bruening, who had never had much hopes of its
success, threw all his energy into the campaign. Schleicher, who had
counted on Roehm to get the other Nazi leaders to accept the proposal
made to them, was equally set on securing the President’s re-election,
since the position and powers of the Presidency were the basis of his
plans. Until that had been accomplished he could not develop these
plans further. For that reason he was willing to support Bruening’s
continuance in office so that he could manage the election campaign.
After that. General von Schleicher considered, a lot of things might
happen. The President himself was nettled by the refusal of the Right-
wing parties to support the prolongation of his office, and finally agreed
to offer himself for re-election. On the Government side of the fence,
therefore, the breakdown of the negotiations had been followed by at
least a temporary consolidation of forces in Bruening’s favour.

This was far from being the case in the Nazi camp. Now that his attempt
to split Hindenburg and Bruening had failed. Hitler had to face an
awkward decision. Was he to risk an open contest with Hindenburg?
The President’s reputation as the most famous figure of the old Army
would inevitably attract many votes from the Right, while his position
as the defender of the Republic against the extremists would win the
support of the moderate and democratic parties. Hindenburg, or rather
the Hindenburg legend, was a formidable opponent. Failure might
destroy the growing belief in Nazi invincibility: on the other hand, dare
they risk evading the contest?

For a month Hitler hesitated, and Goebbels’ diary is eloquent on the
indecision and anxiety of the Nazi leaders. By 2 February Hitler had

^ Hitlers Auscimndersetzung mit Brunmg— in which Hitler’s first letter, Bruemng’s
reply and Hitler’s second letter are printed m full— page 92.

175

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

tentatively decided to stand, but to delay the announcement. Goebbels
adds: “The whole thing teems with worry.” The next day he records:
“Late at night many old members of the Party come to see me. They are
discouraged at not yet having heard anything decisive. They fear the
leader may wait too long.” A week after the first decision, on 9 February,
Goebbels wntes: “The leader is back in Berlin. More discussions at the
Kaiserhof. Everything is in suspense.” 12 February: “Publication of the
decision is put off a few days longer.” 21 February: “This everlasting
waiting is almost demoralizing.” Not until 22 February would Hitler
allow Goebbels to announce his candidature to a packed Nazi meeting
at the big Berlin Sportpalast. “When, after about an hour’s preparation,

I publicly proclaim that the leader will come forward as a candidate,
a storm of deafening applause rages for nearly ten minutes. Wild
ovations for the leader. The audience rises with shouts of joy. They
nearly raise the roof. . . . People laugh and cry at the same time.”’-

Shortly before Goebbels spoke the Nationalists and the Stahlhelm
announced that they would put up their own candidate. The Harzburg
front of the Nationalists and Nazis was thus finally broken; or, as
Goebbels put it : “We have to come to grips now for the first time with the
Reaction.” With little confidence in the result, the Nationalists chose as
their candidate, not Hugenberg, nor even Seldte, the leader of the
Stahlhelm, but Seldte’s second-in-command, Duesterberg. This was as
good as saying that they expected to lose in advance. Characteristically,
Hitler, after hesitating for a month, now staked everything on w innin g,
and flung himself into the campaign with a whole-hearted conviction
of success. Once he had embarked on a course of action, Hitler was
flot a man to look back.

The period of waiting had not been wasted. Even before Hitler finall y
broke off the negotiations with Bruening, Goebbels was already at work
preparing for the election campaign. On 24 January he noted in his
diary; “The elections are prepared down to the minutest detail. It will
be a struggle such as the world has never before witnessed.” On 4
February he writes: “The lines of the election campaign are all laid
down. We now need only to press the button to set the machine going.”

One of Goebbels’ greatest anxieties had been the financing of the
election campaign. On 5 January he wrote despairingly: “Money is
wanting everywhere. It is very difficult to obtain. Nobody will give us
credit. Once you get the power you can get the cash galore, but then
you need it no longer. Without the power you need the money, but then
^ Goebbels pages 33-47.

176

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

you can’t get it.” A month later (8 February) he was much more cheer-
ful: “Money affairs improve daily. The financing of the electoral cam-
paign is practically assured.” One of the reasons for this sudden change
of tone in Goebbels’ references to finance was a visit Hitler had paid to
Diisseldorf, the capital of the German steel industry, on 27 January.

The meeting, arranged by Fritz Thyssen, was held in the Park Hotel,
where Hitler spoke to the Industry Club. It was the first time that
many of the West German industrialists present had met Hitler, and
their reception of him was cool and reserved. Yet Hitler, far from being
nervous, spoke for two and a half hours without pause, and made one
of the best speeches of his life. In it is to be found every one of the stock
ideas out of which he built his propaganda, brilliantly dressed up for the
audience of business men he was addressing. For this reason it is worth
quoting at some length as an example of his technique as a speaker.

With his mind still full of the last exchange of letters with the Chan-
cellor, Hitler began by attacking Bruening’s view that the dominant con-
sideration in German politics at this time ought to be the country’s
foreign relations. “I regard it as of the first importance to break down the

view that our destiny is conditioned by world events Assertions that

a people’s fate is solely determined by foreign powers have always
formed the shifts of bad governments.” The determining factor m
national life was the inner worth of a people and its spirit. In Germany,
however, this inner worth had been undermined by setting up the false
values of democracy and the supremacy of mere numbers in opposition
to the creative principle of individual personality.

Hitler chose his illustrations with skill. Private property, he pointed
out, could only be justified on the ground that men’s achievements in the.
economic field were unequal. “But it is absurd to build up economic
life on the conceptions of achievement, of the value of personality and
on the authority of personality, while in the political sphere you deny
this authority and thrust in its place the law of the greatest number —
democracy.” Not only was it inconsistent, it was dangerous, for the
philosophy of egalitarianism would in time be extended from politics
to economics, as it already had been in Bolshevik Russia: “In the
economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political
sphere.”

Hitler dwelt at length on the threat of Communism, for it was some-
thing more, he said, than “a mob storming about in some of our streets
m Germany, it is a conception of the world which is in the act of sub-
jecting to itself the entire Asiatic continent.” Unless it were halted it
would “gradually shatter the whole world . . . and transform it as com-

177

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

pietely as did Christianity.” Already, thanks to the economic crisis.
Communism had gained a foothold in Germany. Unemployment was
driving millions of Germans to look on Communism as the “logical
theoretical counterpart of their actual economic situation.” This was
the heart of the German problem— not the result of foreign conditions,
“but of our internal aberration, our internal division, our internal
collapse.” And this state of affairs was not to be cured by the economic
expedients embodied in emergency decrees, but by the exercise of
political power. It was not economics but politics that formed the
prime factor in national life.

For It was not German business that conquered the world, followed by the
development of German power, but the power-State which created for the
business world the general conditions for its subsequent prosperity, (Fery
true!) In my view it is to put the cart before the horse when today people
believe that by business methods they can recoverGermany’s power-position,
instead of realizing that the power-position is also the condition for the

improvement of the economic situation There is only one fundamental

solution — the realization that there can be no flourishing economic life
which has not before it and behind it a flourishing, powerful State as its
protection. . . . There can be no economic hfe unless behmd this economic
life there stands the determined political will of the nation absolutely ready
to strike— and to strike hard. . . . The essential thing is the formation of the
pohtical will of the nation: that is the starting pomt for political action.

The same. Hitler went on, was true of foreign policy. “The Treaty of
Versailles in itself is only the consequence of our own slow inner con-
fusion and aberration of mind. ... In the life of peoples the strength
which can be turned outwards depends upon the strength of a nation’s
internal organization, and that in turn upon the stabihty of views held
in common on certain fundamental questions.” It was no good appealing
for national unity and sacrifice for the State when “fifty per cent of the
people wish only to smash the State in pieces and feel themselves to be
the vanguard not only of an alien attitude towards the State ... but of a
will which is hostile to the State . . . when only fifty per cent of a people
are ready to fight for the national colours, while fifty per cent have
hoisted another flag which stands for a State which is to be found only
outside the bounds of their own State.”

“Unless Germany can master this internal division in Weltanschau-
mgen no measures of the legislature can stop the decline of the German
nation. (Very true!)" Recognizing this fact, the Nazi movement had
set out to create a new outlook which would re-unite and re-vitalize
the German people.

178

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

Here is an organization which is filled with an indomitable, aggressive spirit,
an organization which, when a political opponent says ‘'Your behaviour we
regard as a provocation,” does not see fit immediately to retire from the
scene, but brutally enforces its own will and hurls against the opponent the
retort: “We fight today! We fight tomorrow! And if you regard our meeting
today as a provocation we shall hold yet another next week— until you have
learned that it is no provocation when German Germany also professes its
belief* * . And when people cast m our teeth our intolerance, we proudly
acknowledge it— yes, we have formed the inexorable decision to destroy
Marxism in Germany down to its very last root. . . . Today we stand at the
turning-point of Germany’s destiny, , . . Either we shall succeed in working
out a body-politic hard as iron from this conglomeration of parties, associ-
ations, unions and Weltanschaumgen, from this pride of rank and madness
of class, or else, lacking this internal consolidation, Germany will fall in
final nun

Remember that it means sacrifice when today many hundreds of thou-
sands of S.A. and S.S. men every day have to mount on their lorries, protect
meetings, undertake marches, sacrifice themselves night after night and
then come back in the grey dawn to workshop and factory, or as unemployed
to take the pittance of the dole; it means sacrifice when from the little they
possess they have to buy their uniforms, their shirts, their badges, yes, and
even pay their own fares. But there is already m all this the force of an
ideal— a great ideal! And if the whole German nation today had the same
faith in its vocation as these hundred thousands, if the whole nation possessed
this idealism, Germany would stand m the eyes of the world otherwise than
she stands now!^

When Hitler sat down the audience, whose reserve had long since
thawed, rose and cheered him wildly. “The effect upon the indus-
trialists,” wrote Otto Dietrich, who was present, “was great, and very
evident during the next hard months of struggle.”- Thyssen adds that,
as a result of the impression Hitler made, large contributions from the
resources of heavy industry flowed into the Nazi treasury. With an
astuteness which matched that of his appeal to the Army, Hitler had 1
won an important victory. As the Army officers saw m Hitler the man
who promised to restore Germany’s military power, so the industrialists
came to see in him the man who would defend their interests against the !
threat of Communism and the claims of the trade unions, giving a free 1
hand to private enterprise and economic exploitation in the name of the |
principle of “creative individuality.”

^ Baynes* vol I, pages 777-829, a verbatim translation of the speech.
^ Otto Dietrich: (English translation) page 14.

179

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

The election campaign for the Presidency was the first of five major
electoral contests in Germany in less than nine months. It was notable
for a number of reasons. First, because of the bitterness with which it
was fought. Goebbels set the tone by his reference to Hmdenburg in the
Reichstag as “the candidate of the party of deserters,” and the Nazis,
who knew they were fighting against heavy odds, spared neither the
President nor anyone else in their attacks on the “System.” Their
violence aroused the Republican parties to great efforts in their turn:
nearly eighty-five per cent of the total electorate voted, and in many
urban areas the vote was as high as ninety-five per cent. Second, because
of the extraordinary confusion of parties. Hindenburg, a Protestant, a
Prussian and a monarchist, received his most solid support from the
Social Democrats and the trade unions, the Catholic Centre (Bruemng’s
own party) and the other smaller democratic parties, to whom the old
man had become a symbol of the Constitution. The conservative upper
classes of the Protestant north voted either for Duesterberg, the candi-
date of the Nationalist Party (to which Hindenburg himself belonged by
rights), or for the Austrian demagogue, Hitler, who was hurriedly made
a German citizen only on the eve of the election by the Nazi-controlled
state of Brunswick. Industry and big business divided its support
between all three candidates, while the working-class vote was split by
J;he Communists, whose bitterest attack was directed against the rival
Social Democrats and the trade unions.

The third factor which made the election notable was the character
of the Nazi campaign, a masterpiece of organized agitation which
attempted to take Germany by storm. Every constituency down to the
most remote village was canvassed. In the little Bavarian hamlet of
Dietramszell, where the President spent his summer holidays, the Nazis
brought m some of their best speakers to capture 228 votes against the
Field-Marshal’s 157 — a typical piece of Nazi spite. The walls of the
towns were plastered with screaming Nazi posters; films of Hitler and
Goebbels were made and shown everywhere (an innovation in 1932);
gramophone records were produced which could be sent through the
post, two hundred thousand marks spent on propaganda in one week
alone. But, true to Hitler’s belief in the superiority of the spoken word,
the main Nazi effort went into organizing a chain of mass meetings at
which the principal Nazi orators. Hitler, Goebbels, Gregor Strasser,

180

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

worked their audiences up to hysterical enthusiasm by mob oratory
of the most unrestrained kind. Goebbels’ own programme, which can
be reconstructed from his diary, is impressive enough. Between 22
February and 12 March he made nineteen speeches in Berlin (including
four in the huge Sportpalast) and addressed mass meetings in nine other
towns as widely separated as Breslau, Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg and
Nuremberg, dashing back to Berlin by the night tram to supervise the
work of the central propaganda organization. At Breslau Hitler spoke to
sixty thousand people; in other places to crowds estimated at one
hundred thousand.

The result was baffling. When the polls were closed on the evening of
13 March the Nazi vote had been pushed up from just under six and a
half millions in September, 1930, to just under eleven and a half millions,
an increase of eighty-six per cent, giving Hitler nearly one-third of the
total votes in Germany. But all the Nazi efforts left them more than
seven million votes behind Hmdenburg's figure of 18,661,736. In Berlin
akme Hmdenburg had polled 45 per cent of the votes and the Com-
munists 28 7, as against Hitler’s 23 per cent. This was outright defeat,
and Goebbels was in despair.

By a quirk of chance, however, Hmdenburg’s vote was 0 4 per cent —
less than two hundred thousand votes— short of the absolute majority
required. A second election had therefore to be held. While Goebbels in
Berlin threw up his hands. Hitler in Munich immediately announced
that he would stand again, and before morning on 14 March special
editions of the Volkischer Beobachter were on the streets carrying a new
election manifesto : “The first election campaign is over, the second has
begun today. I shall lead it.” •

It was an uphill fight, with Hitler driving a tired and dispirited Party,
but the ingenious mind of Goebbels, once he had recovered his ner\e,
hit on a novel electioneering device. The leader should co\er Germany
by plane — “Hitler over Gennany.” On 3 April the flight began with
four mass meetings in Saxony, at v/hich Hitler addressed a quarter of a
million people. After Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz and Plauen came moie
meetings at Berlin, Konigsberg, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Essen, Stuttgart
and Munich — in all, twenty different towns in a week from East Prussia
to Westphalia, from the Baltic to Bavaria. On 8 April, when a violent
storm raged over Western Germany and all other air traffic was groun-
ded, the leader flew to Diisseldorf and kept his engagement, with the
whole Nazi Press blaring away that here at last was the man with the
courage Germany needed.

Defeat was certain, but by his exacting performance Hitler pushed up

181

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

his vote again on 10 April by more than two millions to 13,417,460.
The President was safely home with a comfortable 53 per cent — over
nineteen and a quarter million votes— yet by tenacity and boldness
Hitler had avoided disaster, capturing votes not only from the National-
ist candidate, who had failed to stay the course in the second election,
but also from the Communists, whose vote fell by over a million. The
day after the election Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The campaign for
the Prussian State elections is prepared. We go on without a breathing-
space.”

Once again, however, the awkward question presented itself: how was
electoral success, which, however remarkable, still fell far short of a
clear majority, to be turned to political advantage? On 11 March
Goebbels noted: “Talked over instructions with the S.A. and S.S.
commanders. Deep uneasiness is rife everywhere. The notion of an
uprising haunts the air.” And again, on 2 April: “The S.A. getting
impatient. It is understandable enough that the soldiers begin to lose
morale through these long-drawn-out political contests. It has to be
stopped, though, at all costs. A premature putsch would nullify our
whole future.” On the other side, Gregor Strasser, who had opposed
fighting the presidential campaign from the beginning, now renewed his
argument that the chances of success for the pohcy of legality were being
thrown away by Hitler’s “all-or-nothing” attitude and his refusal to
make a deal, except on his own exaggerated terms. What was the point
of Hitler’s virtuoso performance as an agitator, Strasser asked, if it led
the Party, not to power, but into a political cul-de-sac?

For the moment Hitler had no answer to either side, either to the
impatient S.A. or to the critical Strasser. It was the Government which,
strengthened by the elections, now took the imtiative and used its
advantage to move at last against the S.A.

At the end of November, 1931, the State authorities of Hesse had
secured certain documents drawn up by the legal adviser to the Nazi
Party in Hesse, Dr. Werner Best, after secret discussions among a small
group of local Nazi leaders at the house of a Dr. Wagner, Boxheimer
Hof— from which they became known as the Boxheim Papers. These
papers contained a draft of the proclamation to be issued by the S.A.
in the event of a Communist rising, and suggestions for emergency
decrees to be issued by a provisional Nazi government after the Com-
munists had been defeated. Such an emergency, according to the
documents captured, would justify drastic measures, and arrangements
were to be made for the immediate execution of those who resisted the

182

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

Nazi authorities, who refused to co-operate or who were found in
possession of arms. Amongst the measures proposed was the abolition
of the right to private property, of the obligation to pay debts, of interest
on savings, and of all private incomes. The S.A. was to be given the
right to administer the property of the State and of all private citizens;
all work was to be compulsory, without reward, and people were to be
fed by a system of food cards and public kitchens. Provision was added
for the erection of courts-martial under Nazi presidents.

The discovery of these plans caused a sensation, and seriously em-
barrassed Hitler, who declared (probably with justice) that he had
known nothing of them and, had he known, would have disavowed
them. Despite pressure from the Prussian State Government, however,
the Reich Government declined to take action against the Nazis, and
General Greener, the Reich Minister of the Interior, expressed his
confidence in Hitler’s adherence to a policy of legality.^

Evidence of Nazi plans for a seizure of power continued to accumu-
late. However much Hitler underlined his insistence upon legal methods,
the character of the S.A. organization was such that the idea of a putsch
was bound to come naturally to men whose politics were conducted in
an atmosphere of violence and semi-legality. On the day of the first
presidential election Roehm had ordered his S.A. and S.S. troops to
stand by in their barracks, while a ring of Nazi forces was drawn round
the capital. Prussian police, raiding Nazi headquarters, found copies
of Roehm’s orders and marked maps which confirmed the report that
the S.A. had been prepared to carry out a coup d'etat if Hitler secured a
majority. Near the Polish frontier other orders were captured instructing
the local S.A. in Pomerania not to take part in the defence of Germany
in the event of a surprise Polish attack.

As a result of these discoveries the State governments, led by Prussia
and Bavaria, presented Groener with an ultimatum. Either the Reich
Government must act against the S.A. or, they hinted, they would take
independent action themselves. In his letter of 1947, Bruening expresses
the view that such action was premature^ although he gives no reasons
for this. Groener, however, felt obliged to act, partly to avoid a situation
which would undermine the authority of the Reich Government, partly to
avoid the loss of the Social Democratic support on which Bruening
depended, and which was likely to be withdrawn if the demands of the
Prussian State Government were not met. On 10 April, the day of the

1 Conference at the Ministry of the Intenor, 14 December, 1931. Craig: page
216.

2 Bruening: Em Brief, page 4.

183

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

second election, a meeting presided over by the Chancellor confirmed
Groener’s view, and on the 14th a decree was promulgated dissolving
the S A., the S.S., and all their affiliated organizations. The decree added,
as the grounds for this belated action: “These organizations form a
private army whose very existence constitutes a state within the State,
and represent a pennanent source of trouble for the civil popula-
tion It IS exclusively the business of the State to maintain organized

forces. The toleration of such a partisan organization . . . inevitably
leads to clashes and to conditions comparable to civil war.”

Roehm for a moment thought of resistance; after all, the S.A. now
numbered four hundred thousand men, four times the size of the Army
allowed to Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. But Hitler was in-
sistent: the S.A. must obey. His authority held, and overnight the brown
shirts disappeared from the streets. But the S.A. organization was left
intact; the S.A. troops were merely dismissed from parade, to reappear
as ordinary Party members, Bruenmg and Groener would get their
answer. Hitler declared, at the Prussian elections.

Prussia was by far the largest of the German states, embracing nearly
two-thirds of the whole territory of the Reich, with a population of
forty out of a total of sixty-five millions. Throughout the period of the
Weimar Republic the Prussian Diet and the Prussian State Government,
based on a coalition of the Social Democratic and Centre parties, had
been the stronghold of German democracy. The Prussian Ministry of
the Interior, which controlled by far the biggest administration and
^police force in Germany and was held by a Social Democrat, Karl
Severing, had been more active than any other official agency in trying
to check Nazi excesses, and was the object of venomous Nazi attacks.
To capture a majority in Prussia, therefore, would be a pohtical victory
for the Nazis second only in importance to securing a majority in the
Reichstag.

The date of the Prussian elections had been fixed for 24 April, at tue
same time as State elections in Bavaria, Anhalt, Wiirttemberg and
Hamburg Altogether some four-fifths of Germany would go to the polls.
The Nazi propaganda machine was switched immediately from the
Presidential to the State elections. In a second series of highly publi-
cized flights over Germany, Hitler spoke m twenty-six towns between
15 and 23 April. His attack this time was directed against the Social
Democrats, and in the working-class quarters of the big towns the Nazis
got rough handling. In Prussia they won the same thirty-six per cent of
votes they had secured in the second presidential election, and, with

184

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

eight million votes, became the strongest party in the Prussian Diet.
The coalition of the Social Democrats and the Centre lost it.s majority,
and the Government of Prussia without Nazi co-operation became an
impossibility. Yet once again the Nazis fell short of the majority for
which they had hoped.

Even with the support of the Nationalists, the Nazis were not strong
enough to form an administration in Prussia. Elsewhere — in Wiirttem-
berg, Bavaria and Hamburg — their gains in the number of deputies
were offset by the fact that they had failed to leach the national per-
centage of votes they had won in the second presidential election. By
comparison with the thirty-six per cent they secured on 10 .April, their
votes now stood at 26-4 per cent in Wiirtteniberg, 32'5 in Bavaria and
31 per cent m Hamburg. In all three they were well short of a majority.
The deadlock therefore continued. Three times the trumpet had sounded
and still the walls refused to fall. At the end of a list of their triumphs
Goebbels added to his diary the despondent comment: “Something
must happen now. We must shortly come to power, otherwise our
victory will be a Pyrrhic one.”^

At this moment there appeared a deus ex machiiia in the shape of
General von Schleicher, prepared to discuss once again the admission of
the Nazis by the back door.

General Schleicher had resumed his relations with Roehm and with
the Chief of the Berlin S A., Helldorf, before the presidential elections.'
He appears at this time to have been playing with the idea of detaching
the S A. from Hitler, and bringing them under the jurisdiction of the
State as the militia Roehm had always wanted to make them.- Unknown
to Hitler, it had already been agreed between Roehm and Schleicher
that, in the event of a war-emergency, the S.A. would come under the
command of the Army. Schleicher, however, was still attracted by the
alternative idea of bringing Hitler himself into the Government camp.
In either case, the prohibition of the S.A. was bound to embarrass his
plans.

Although he agreed to Groener’s action on 8 April, when it was first
discussed, the next day Schleicher began to make objections and propose

' Goebbels . page 82

* Cf. Heiden Dei Fueher, pages 355-6; also Gordon Craig- page 227, where
he says that Groener inclined to the view that Schkichei hoped to seduce the
S.A. from its allegiance to the Fuehrer through his own close liaison with Roehm.

185

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

changes of plan — such as a last warning to Hitler. This was rejected at
the meeting in the Chancellery on the 10th, but Schleicher persisted in
stirring up opposition in the Army and went behind Groener’s back to
the President. He let Hitler know that he did not agree with the ban,
and persuaded Hmdenburg to write an irritable letter to Groener
conaplaining about the activities of the Social Democratic organization,
the Reiehsbamer, with the implication that the prohibition of the S.A.
had been one-sided. The material for this letter, Groener discovered,
had been provided from a section in his own Ministry of Defence which
was under Schleicher’s direction, and the letter had been made public
almost before he had received it. A malicious whispering campaign
against Groener himself now began, and on 10 May Goering delivered
a violent attack on him in the Reichstag. When Groener, a sick man,
attempted to reply, he met a storm of abuse and obstruction from the
Nazi benches. Scarcely had he sat down, exhausted by the effort, when
he was blandly informed by Schleicher, the man he regarded almost as
his own son, and by Hamraerstein, Commander-in-Chief, that the Army
no longer had confidence in him, and that it would be best for him to
resign. Bruening loyally defended Groener, but on 12 May there were
such scenes of uproar in the Reichstag that the Chamber had to be
cleared by the police. The next day Groener resigned. The Nazis were
jubilant.

Groener’s departure, treacherously engineered by Schleicher, was
only a beginning. Schleicher had now made up his mind that the chief
obstacle to the success of his plan for a deal with the Nazis was Bruening,
who was reluctant to make concessions to the Nazis to win their support,
"and who had become the butt of Nazi attacks on the “System.” The man
he had himself proposed as Chancellor in March, 1930, had outlived
his usefulness. With the same cynical disloyalty with which he had
stabbed Groener in the back, Schleicher now set about unseating
Bruening.

Bruening was not in a strong position to defend himself. Although he
had striven honestly and dourly to master the crisis in Germany for two
years, success still eluded him. He had failed to secure a stable majority
in the Reichstag, and had so far failed to restore prosperity to Germany,
even though he believed that the next few months would see a gradual
easing of the depression. His great hope of redressing the humiliation
of the Austro-German Customs Union plan and of offsetting domestic
failure by a big success in foreign policy— the cancellation of reparations
and the recognition of Germany’s right to equality in armaments —
had been frustrated, the first by the postponement of the Reparations

186

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

Conference at Lausanne until June, 1932, the second by the long-
drawn-out opposition of the French at the Disarmament Conference.
He was to enjoy the bitter consolation of seeing his successors secure
the fruits of his own labours in foreign policy, but his efforts for
Germany abroad were to contribute nothing to alleviate his own diffi-
culties. Ironically, his one great success, the re-election of the President,
weakened rather than strengthened his position. For, with that safely
accomplished, Bruening no longer appeared indispensable, and, under
the careful coaching of Schleicher and other candid friends, the old man
had come to feel resentment against the Chancellor as the man whose
obstinacy had forced him to endure an election campaign, and to stand
as the candidate of the Left against his own friends on the Right.

Moreover, Bruening had made powerful enemies who enjoyed great
influence with the President, the man on whose willingness to continue
signing emergency decrees the Chancellor ultimately depended. The
industrialists complained of his attempts to keep prices down and of the
social policies initiated by Stegerwald, Bruening’s Labour Minister, the
leader of the Catholic trade unions. A proposal for taking over insolvent
properties in Eastern Germany and using these for land-colonization
roused the passionate hostility of the powerful Junker class, who used
the opportunity of Hindenburg’s visit to his estate of Neudeck at
Whitsuntide to press their demand for Bruenmg’s dismissal as the
sponsor of “Agrarian Bolshevism.” Finally, Schleicher, claiming to
speak with the legendary authority of the Army, announced that the
Array no longer had confidence in the Chancellor. A stronger man was
needed to deal with the situation, and he already had a suitable candi-
date ready in Papen. He added the all-important assurance that the
Nazis had agreed to support the new Government. With Papen the
President would be sure of a Ministry which would be acceptable to his
friends of the Right and to the Army, and at the same time command
popular support — ^that elusive combination which Bruening had failed
to provide.

Ostensibly Hitler played no part in the manoeuvres which led to
Bruening’s dismissal. On the surface, the Nazi leaders were occupied
with negotiations for a possible coalition in Prussia and with the pro-
vincial elections in Mecklenburg. The possibility of a combination
between the Nazis and the Catholic Centre to form a government in
Prussia interested Bruening, who hoped in this way to force the Nazis
to accept a share of responsibility. Safeguards could be provided by
combining the premiership of Prussia with his own office of Chancellor,

187

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

as Bismarck had done, and by placing control of the police in Prussia
and the other federal states in the hands of the Reich Minister of the
Interior. On the Nazi side, Bruening’s offer was supported by Gregor
Strasser, still seeking to effect a compromise solution. Even Goebbels,
who hated Strasser, was impressed. On 26 April he wrote in his diary:
“We have a difficult decision to make. Coalition with the Centre and
power, or opposition to the Centre minus power. From a parliamentary
point of view, nothing can be achieved without the Centre — either in
Prussia or the Reich. This has to be thoroughly thought over.” But
Schleicher, who was in touch with the Nazi leaders through Roehm and
Helldorf, and who was bent on frustrating Bruening’s plans, offered
more tempting possibilities. The negotiations with the Centre suddenly
ceased to make progress.

On 28 April Hitler himself had a talk with Schleicher, and Goebbels,
after noting that the conference went off well, added: “The leader
has decided to do nothing at the moment, but mark time. Things are
not to be precipitated.” On 8 May another meeting took place. In
order to lull Bruening’s suspicion, it was decided that Hitler should keep
away from Berlin. Until the end of the month Hitler spent most of his
time in Mecklenburg and Oldenburg— two states in which provincial
elections were impending— or down in Bavaria. Roehm and Goering
acted as his representatives in Berlin, but they had little more to do than
to keep in touch with Schleicher and wait for news of developments.

What Schleicher offered was the overthrow of the Bruening Cabinet,
the removal of the ban on the S.A. and S.S., and new elections for the
^ Reichstag. In return for these solid advantages he asked only for tacit
support, the “neutrality” of the Nazis towards the new presidential
cabinet which Papen was to form. Such a promise cost Hitler nothing to
give. Time would show who was to do the double-crossing, Schleicher
or the Nazis. Meanwhile Hitler’s agreement provided Schleicher with a
winning argument for Hindenburg. Papen would be able to secure what
Bruemng had failed to get. Hitler’s support, without taking him into the
Cabinet. If necessary, Schleicher too reflected, alliances could always
be repudiated; the important thing was to get Bruening out and Papen
in.

Groener’s fall on 13 May raised the hopes of the Nazi leaders high.
On the 18th Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Back in Berlin” — ^he had
been to Munich to report to Hitler — “For Bruening alone winter seems
to have arrived. He is being secretly undermined and is already com-
pletely isolated. He is anxiously looking for collaborators — ‘My king-
dom for a Cabinet Minister!’ General Schleicher has declined the

188

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

Ministry of Defence.^ . . . Our mice are busily at work gnawing through
the last supports of Bruenmg’s position.” “Rat” would perhaps have
been a better word to describe the part played by General von Schleicher.
Goebbels added some venomous comments on the activities of Gregor
Strasser, who was still trying to revive the idea of a coalition with the
Centre and a compromise with Bruening as an alternative to the deal
with Schleicher. But Strasser’s manoeuvres came to nothing. On the
24th Goebbels wrote. “Saturday (28 Mayi will see the end of Bruening.
The list of Ministers is more or less settled. The main point as far as
we are concerned is that the Reichstag is dissolved.”

Once Bruening had secured the passage of the Finance Bill through
the Reichstag there was no further need to delay. At the end of May
Schleicher’s and the Junkers’ intrigues were crowned by the Piesident’s
request for the Chancellor’s resignation. On 30 May Bruening resigned.
That fatal reliance on the President which he had been foiced to accept
as the only way out of the political deadlock had produced a situation in
which governments could be made and unmade by the simple grant or
withdrawal of the President’s confidence. Who bore the responsibil.ty
for allowing such a situation to arise will long be a matter of co.itroversy,
but the result was plain enough; it was the end of dem icratic govern-
ment in Germany. The key to power over a nation of siviy-five million
people was now openly admitted to lie in the hands of an aged soldier
of eighty-five and the little group of men who determined his views.

Hitler was at Horuraersiel, on the North Sea, taking part in the Olden-
burg elections which on 29 May provided the Nazis with a well-timed
success, over forty-eight per cent of the votes and a clear majority of
seats in the Diet. Over the week-end he moved to Mecklenburg. Hardly^
had he begun w'ork there w'hen the news came that Biuening was out.
Goebbels rang up from Berlin ju.st after noon and motored out to meet
Hitler at Nauen. As they drove back they discussed the situation. There
w'as little time to talk, for Hitler had to see the President at four o’clock.
Goering accompanied him and the interview lasted only a few minutes.
Htndenburg informed them briefly that he intended to appoint von
Papen as Chancellor and understood that Hitler had agreed to support
li'in. Was this correct? Hitler answered ; “Yes.” Back in Berlin, Goebbels
ci.mmented in his diary “Von Papen is, it seems, to be appointed
Chancellor, but that is neither here nor there. The Poll! The Poll'
It’s the people we want. We are all entirely satisfied.”

^ When Biuening, after td\mg Schlcichei with the intiigue ii'nimst Groencr,
demanded that Schlcicher should take his p! ice as Minislci of Dclciice, Schleicher
retorted “I will, but not in your Government.” Cf. Wheelei-Bcnnctt: Hiiidenburg,
the Wooden Titan, page 385,

189

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

The new Chancellor, Franz von Papen, a man in his fifties, came from
a Catholic family of the Westphalian nobility. He had belonged to the
right cavalry regiment (he was a celebrated gentleman-rider) and now to
the right clubs, the Henenklub and the Union. He had great charm, a
wide acquaintance in the social world, connections with both German
and French industry (he had married the daughter of a wealthy Saar
industrialist), and considerable political ambitions. So far these am-
bitions had not been taken seriously by anyone else. He owned a big
block of shares in Germania, the Centre Party’s paper, and was
nominally a member of the Centre Party. He only sat in the Prussian
Diet, however, not in the Reichstag, and there he was in single-handed
opposition to the Centre’s combination with the Social Democrats by
which Prussia had been governed until the April elections. Papen was
no democrat; he talked vaguely of a Christian Conservatism, which in
practice meant a restoration of the privileges and power of the old
ruling class of Imperial days in an authoritarian state with a veneer of
respectability. If Schleicher did not go as far as Clemenceau, who is
reported to have urged the election of Sadi Carnot to the French
Presidency with the recommendation “Vote for the stupidest,” he was
certainly attracted to the improbable choice of Papen as Chancellor by
the belief that he would prove a pliant instrument in his hands. This v/as
to prove a serious underestimate of Papen’s ambition and tenacity, no
less than of his unscrupulousness. It was a choice which startled every-
one and pleased few, with the important exception of the President, who
was delighted with the company of a Chancellor who knew how to
charm and flatter so well that he soon established relations with him
such as no other minister had ever had.

If Schleicher believed that Papen would be able to rally a coalition
of the Centre and the Right he was soon disillusioned. The Centre Party,
furious at the arbitrary way in w'hich Bruenmg had been dismissed, went
into deteimined opposition. Hugenberg, the leader of the blationahsts,
was indignant at the failure to consider his own claims, while Hitler had
bound himself to no more than a vague promise of support, and no
Nazis were included in the Ministry. The character of the new Govern-
ment was in fact so blatantly out of keeping with feeling in the country
that it aroused a universal storm of abuse. Only with great difficulty,
and by the exercise of the President’s personal authority, had it been

190

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

possible to collect a Cabinet of men willing to serve under Papen. Of
its ten members, none of whom was a political figure of the front rank,
seven belonged to the nobility with known Right-wing views. Of the
remainder, Professor Warmbold, the Minister of Economics, was con-
nected with the great Dye Trust, LG. Farben; Schaeffer, the Minister of
Labour, was a director of Krupps; while the Minister of Justice, Franz
Giirtner, was the Bavarian Minister who had most persistently pro-
tected Hitler in the 1920s.

Bruening, although driven to rely on the President’s emergency
powers, had none the less been a parliamentary Chancellor in the sense
that he had only once been actually defeated in the Reichstag and had
then gone to the country. But from the beginning there was not the least
chance of Papen avoiding an overwhelming defeat if he met parliament;
the power of the “Cabinet of Barons” was openly and unashamedly
based upon the support of the President and the Array. The Social
Democratic paper, Vonvdrts, could be excused a justifiable exaggera-
tion when it wrote of “this little clique of feudal monarchists, come to
power by backstairs methods with Hitler’s support, which now an-
nounces the class-war from above.”

Of the four parties in Germany which commanded mass support,
two, the Communists and the Social Democrats, were bound to oppose
Papen’s government; the third, the Centre, had excommunicated him;
only the fourth, the Nazis, remained as a possible ally. A temporary
tolerance had been secured from the Nazis at the price of two con-
cessions, the dissolution of the Reichstag and the lifting of the ban on
the S.A. The question which dominated German politics from the end
of May, 1932, to the end of January, 1933, was whether this temporary*
arrangement could be turned into a permanent coalition.

Both sides were willing to consider such a proposal — Hitler because
this was the only way in which he could come to power if he failed to win
an outright majority, and turned his back on a putsch; the group around
the President, Papen and Schleicher, because this offered the only
prospect of recruiting popular support for their rule and the best chance,
as they believed, of taking the wind out of the Nazi sails. The elements of
a deal were present all the time; the question was, on whose terms—
Hitler’s or Papen’s? Hitler was even less content than in 1923 to be the
drummer and leave the decisions to the gentlemen and the generals.
On the other side, Papen and Schleicher persisted in believing that they
could get Nazi support for less than Hitler demanded. Each side there-
fore tried to blockade the other. When Papen could not get Nazi
support on his terms, he left them to cool their heels, calculating that the

191

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Strain on the Party of continued frustration would force Hitler to reduce
his demands. Hitler, on his side, tried to stick it out without capitulating.
This is the underlying pattern of events in the latter half of 1932. Super-
imposed on it is a second pattern created by the fact that both sides,
the group around the President and the Nazi leaders, became divided
on the right tactics to pursue; on one side this is represented by a split
between Papen and Schleicher, on the other side by the quarrel between
Hitler and Gregor Strasser.

With this in mind, the period from Papen’s Chancellorship to Hitler’s
can be divided into four sections.

The first, from Bruening’s resignation on 30 May, 1932, to the Reich-
stag elections on 31 July.

The second, from the Reichstag elections of July to those of 6
November, 1932.

The third, from the Reichstag elections of November to the beginning
of Schleicher’s Chancellorship on 2 December, 1932

The fourth, from Schleicher’s Chancellorship to Hitler’s, which began
on 30 January, 1933.

The first of these periods was inconclusive, indeed was bound to be so.
For, until the elections had been held, neither side was able to gauge its
own or the other’s strength. Hitler was still hopeful that the elections,
the first elections for the Reichstag since September, 1930, might bring
him an outright majority. At the Mecklenburg provincial elections on
5 June the Nazis polled forty-nine per cent of the votes, and in Hesse,
later in the month, forty-four per cent. The tide still appeared to be
* running in their favour.

Papen dissolved the Reichstag on 4 June, and fixed the new elections
for the last day of July. Even this brief delay aroused Nazi suspicions;
and when the lifting of the S.A ban was postponed until the middle of
the month, relations between Hitler and the new Government became
strained. On 5 June Goebbels wrote in his diary: “We must disassociate
ourselves at the eailiest possible moment from the temporary bourgeois
Cabinet.” As the unpopularity of the Cabinet became evident, the Nazis
began sniping at the Government. There was considerable grumbling in
the Party at a “compromise with Reaction.” Unless the Nazis were to
be tarred with the same brush, and to leave to the parties of the Left a
monopoly of attacking the “Cabinet of Barons,” they had to assert
their independence.

When the ban on the S.A. was lifted, Thaelmann, the Communist
leader, described it as an open provocation to murder. This proved to

192

THE MONTHS OF OPPORI UNITY

be literally true, for, in the weeks which followed, murder and violence
became everyday occurrences in the streets of the big German cities.
According to Grzesmski, the Police President of Berlin at the time,
there were 461 political riots in Prussia alone between 1 June and 20
July, 1932, in which eighty-two people were killed and four hundred
seriously wounded.' The fiercest fighting was between the Nazis and
the Communists; of eighty-si,x people killed in July, 1932, thirty were
Communists and thirty-eight Nazis. Provocation was certainly not
confined to one side: on an election visit to the Ruhr in July, Goebbels
was given a rough reception, and the funerals of S.A. men became the
occasion of big Nazi demonstrations. Pitched battles took place on
Sunday, 10 July, in which eighteen people were killed. The next Sunday,
the 17th, saw the worst not of the summer, at Altona, near “Red”
Hamburg, where the Nazis under police escort staged a march through
the working-class districts of the town, and were nun by a fusillade of
shots from the roofs and windows, which they immediately returned.
Nineteen people were reported to have been killed and two hundred and
eighty-five wounded on that day alone.

The Altona riots gave Papen the excuse he needed to end the political
deadlock m Prussia, where the Social-Democratic and Centre coalition
remained in office without a majority in the Diet. On the llimsy pretext
that the Prussian Government could not be relied on to deal firmly with
the Communists, Papen used the President’s emergency powers on 20
July to depose the Prussian Ministers, appointing himself as Reich
Commissioner for Prussia, and Bracht, the Burgomaster of Essen, as
his Deputy and Prussian Minister of the Interior. By this action Papen ^
hoped partly to conciliate the Nazis, paitly to steal some of the Nazi
thunder against “Marxism.” To carry out his plan Papen had stretched
the constitutional powers of the Piesidcnt to the limit, and Karl Sever-
ing, the Social Democratic Minister of the Interior in Prussia, required a
show of force before he was prepared to yield. But it was only a show.
The trade unions and the Social Democratic Party, which had defeated
the Kapp putsch in 1920 by a general strike, discussed the possibility of
another such strike, only to reject it. Whether they were right to yield or
should have resisted, and what would have been their chances of success,
has been much debated since. ‘ Whatever view one takes of the Labour
leaders’ action, however, the fact that the two largest working-class
organizations in Germany, the Social Deraociatic Party and the trade

^ Albert Grzesmski; Inside Germany (N.Y., 1939), chapter 10.

“ The writer found Herr Severing still ready to defend his course of action when he
talked to him at Bielefeld in July, 1945. Cf. also his mcmoiis, Mein Lebensweg
(K61n, 1950), vol. II.

L.H.— G

193

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

unions, had not put up even a token resistance in face of Papen’s coup
d'itat, was a significant pointer to the opposition (or lack of it) which
Hitler might expect to meet if he came to power.

The removal of the Prussian Government, even if it was only the
logical sequel to the defeat of the Government parties at the Prussian
elections of April, 1932, was a heavy blow to those who still remained
loyal to the Weimar Republic. The republican parties were shown to be
on the defensive and lacking the conviction to offer more than a passive
resistance. However much Papen and Schleicher might claim the credit
of this show of energy for the new government, in fact any blow which
discredited democratic and constitutional government must bring
advantage to the Nazis and the Communists, the two extremist parties.
The impression that events favoured the triumph of one or other form
of extremism was strengthened, and helped both parties to win votes
at the coming elections.

The elections were held on the last day of July. Goebbels had been
making his preparations since the beginning of May and the fourth
election campaign in five months found the Nazi organization at the
top of its form. The argument that things must change, and the promise
that, if the Nazis came to power, they would, proved a powerful attrac-
tion in a country driven to the limit of endurance by two years of
economic depression and mass unemployment, made worse by the
inability of the Government to relieve the nation’s ills. It was the spirit
of revolt engendered by these conditions to which Nazism gave ex-
pression, unhampered by the doctrinaire teaching and class exclusive-
ness of Communism.

“The rise of National Socialism,” Gregor Strasser said in the Reich-
stag on 10 May, “is the protest of a people against a State that denies
the right to work and the revival of natural intercourse If the machinery
for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable
of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that
system is false and must be altered. The important part of the present
development is the anti-capitalist sentiment that is permeating our
people; it is the protest of the people against a degenerate economic
system. It demands from the State that, in order to secure its own right
to live, It shall break with the Demons Gold, World Economy, Material-
ism, and with the habit of thinking in export statistics and the bank rate,
and shall be capable of restoring honest payment for honest labour.
This anti-capitalist sentiment is a proof that we are on the eve of a
great cliange—the conquest of Liberalism and the rise of new ways
194

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

of economic thought and of a new conception of the State.”'

It may well be asked how Strasser’s speech was to be reconciled with
Hitler’s talk to the industrialists at Dusseldorf a few months before, or
what precisely the Nazis meant by “new ways of economic thought and
a new conception of the State.” In 1932, however, large sections of the
German people were in no mood to ciiticize the contradictions of the
Nazi programme, but were attracted by the radieabsm of its appeal and
the violence of its protest against a system which — whatever was to be
put in its place — tiiey passionately desired to see overthrown.

This sentiment was exploited by skilful electioneering. “Once more
eternally on the move,” Goebbels complained on 1 July “Work has to
be done standing, walking, driving, flying. The most urgent conferences
are held on the stairs, in the hall, at the door, or on the way to the
station. It nearly drives one out of one’s senses. One is carried by tram,

motor-car and aeroplane criss-cross through Germany The audience

generally has no idea of what the speaker has already gone through
during the day before he makes his speech in the evening. . . . And in
the meantime he is struggling with the heat, to find the right word, with
the sequence of a thought, with a voice that is growing hoarse, with
unfortunate acoustics and with the bad air that reaches him from the
tightly packed audience of thousands of people.”'

The whole familiar apparatus of Nazi ballyhoo was brought into play
—placards, Press, sensational charges and counter-charges, mass
meetings, demonstrations, S.A. parades. As a simple feat of physical
endurance, the speaking programme of men like Hitler and Goebbels
was remarkable. Again Hitler took to the skies, and in the third “Flight •
over Germany” visited and spoke in close on fifty towns in the second
half of July. Delayed by bad weather. Hitler reached one of his meetings,
near Stralsund, at half past two in the morning. A crowd of thousands
waited patiently for him in drenching rain. 'When he finished speaking
they saluted the dawn with the mass-singing of '''Deutschland uber
Aiks."' This was more than clever electioneering. The Nazi campaign
could not have succeeded as it did by the ingenuity of its methods alone,
if it had not at the same time corresponded and appealed to the mood of
a considerable proportion of the German people.

When the results were announced on the night of 31 July the Nazis
had outstripped all their competitors, and with 13,745,000 votes and
230 seats in the Reichstag had more than doubled the support they had
won at the elections of September, 1930. They were now by far the

* Quoted m Heiden. Hhtory of National Socialism, page i S8.
“Goebbels; pages lib-'/.

195

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

largest party in Germany, their nearest rivals, the Social Democrats,
polling just under eight million votes, the Communists five and a quarter
million, and the Centre four and a half. Taking 1928 as the measuring
rod, the gains made by Hitler— close on thirteen million votes in four
years — are still more striking. If he had done little to shake the solid
bloc of Social Democratic and Centre votes, he had taken away some
six million votes from the parties to the Right of them and captured the
greater part of the six million new voters. The mass support of the Nazis
in 1932 came from those who had voted in 1928 for the middle-class
parties, like the People’s Party, the Democrats and the Economic Party,
whose combined vote of 5,582,500 in 1928 had sunk to 954,700 in 1932;
from the Nationalist Party, which had lost a million and a half votes;
from young people, many without jobs, voting for the first time; and
from those who had not voted before, but had been stirred by events
and by propaganda to come to the polls this time.

The second period began therefore with a resounding success for the
Nazis, but a success which remained inconclusive, and left Papen and
Hitler free to put very different interpretations on the situation. For the
Nazi vote (37-3 per cent) still fell short of the clear majority for which
they had hoped. Moreover, although the Nazis’ figures showed an
increase in votes, the rate of increase was dropping:

September, 1930 (Reichstag) . . 18 3 per cent of votes cast

March, 1932 (1st presidential election) . 30 „ „ „ „ „

April, 1932 (2nd presidential election) . 36-7 „ „ „ „ „

April, 1932 (Prussian Diet) . . . 36 3 „ „ „ „ „

» July, 1932 (Reichstag) . . . 37-3 „ „ „ „

As the British Ambassador remarked in a dispatch to the Foreign
Secretary; “Hitler seems now to have exhausted his reserves. He has
swallowed up the small bourgeois parties of the Middle and the Right,
and there is no indication that he will be able to effect a breach in the
Centre, Communist and Socialist parties. ... All the other parties are
naturally gratified by Hitler’s failure to reach anything like a majority
on this occasion, especially as they are convinced that he has now
reached his zenith.”^

From the point of view, however, of a deal with Papen and Schleicher,
Hiller felt himself to be in a very strong position. The Nationalist and
People’s parties, to which alone the Government could look for support
apart from the Nazis, had again lost votes, and together held no more
than 44 out of a total of 608 seats. The combined strength of the two

1 Sir H. Rumbold to Sir J. Simon, 3 August, 1932: Biit. Doc., 2nd series, vol. IV,
No 8.

196

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUMTi'

extremist parties, the Nazis and the Communists (230 and 89), added up
to more than fifty per cent of the Reichstag, sufficient to make govern-
ment with parliament impossible, unless the Nazis could be brought
to support the Government. With a voting strength of 13,700,000
electors, a party membership of over a million and a private army of
400,000 S.A. and S.S., Hitler was the most powerful political leader in
Germany, knocking on the doors of the Chancellery at the head of the
most powerful political party Germany had ever seen.

Inflamed by the election campaign, and believing that the long-
awaited day was within sight, the S.A. threatened to get out of hand.
On 8 August, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “The air is full of presage.

. . . The whole party is ready to take over power. The S.A. down everyday
tools to prepare for this. If things go well, everything is all right. It they
do not, it will be an awful setback.” Two days later: “The S.A. is in
readiness for an alarm and is standing to The S.A. are closely con-

centrated round Berlin; the manoeuvre is carried out with imposing
precision and discipline.” The outbreaks of street-shooting and bomb-
throwing flared up, especially in the eastern provinces of Silesia and
East Prussia. In the first nine days of August a score of incidents was
reported every day, culminating on 9 August in the murder at Potempa,
a village in Silesia, of a Communist called Pielrzuch, who was brutally
kicked to death by five Nazis in front of his mother. The same
day Papen’s Government announced the death penalty for clashes
which led to people being killed. The Nazis at once protested in-
dignantly.

Aware of the highly charged feeling in the Paity, Hitler took time
before he moved. He held a conference of his leaders at Tegernsee, in
Bavaria, on 2 August, but arrived at no final decision. A coalition with
the Centre Party would provide a majority in the Reichstag, but Hitler
was in a mood for “all-or-nothing.” He must have the whole power, not
a share of it. On 5 August he saw General von Schleicher at Fursten-
berg, north of Berlin, and put his demands before him: the Chancellor-
ship for himself, and other Nazis at the head of the Prussian State
Government, the Reich and Prussian Ministries of the Interior (which
controlled the police). With these were to go the Ministry of Justice
and a new Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, which
was reserved for Goebbels. An Enabling Bill, giving Hitler full power to
govern by decree, would be presented to the Reichstag: if the Chamber
refused to pass it, it would be dissolved. Whatever Schleicher said,
Hitler came away in high hopes that the General would use all his in-

197

PARTi' LEADER, 1889-1933

fluence to secure the Chancellorship for him. He was so pleased that he
suggested to Schleicher a tablet should be affixed to the walls of the
house to co mm emorate their histone meeting. He then returned to
Berchtesgaden to await events.

On 9 August, Strasser and Frick joined him there with disquieting
news. The violent behaviour of the S.A. and some of the wilder election
and post-election statements were making people ask if the Nazis were
fit to have power. Funk, who arrived with a message from Schacht,
confirmed this. Business and industrial circles were becoming worried
lest a Hitler Chancellorship should lead to radical economic experiments
on the lines Gottfried Fcder and Gregor Strasser had often threatened.
Still no word came from Berlin.

On 11 August Hitler decided to bring matters to a head.^ Sending
messengers ahead to arrange for him to see the Chancellor and the
President, he left the mountains, and, after a further conference with his
lieutenants on the shores of the Chicmsee, motored north to Berlin.
Goebbcls summed up the results of the conference: “If they do not
afford us the opportunity to square accounts with Marxism, our taking
over power is absolutely useless.”^ This assurance was Hitler’s sop to
the impatient S.A.

Late in the evening of the 12th Hitler reached Berlin and drove out to
Goebbels’ house at Caputh, to avoid being seen. Roehm had already
visited Papen and Schleicher and had asked bluntly who was to be Chan-
cellor. Had Hitler misunderstood Schleicher? The answer Roehm had
been given was none too satisfactory. After Goebbels told him the news,
. Hitler paced up and down for a long time, uneasily calculating his
chances. A hundred times he must have asked himself whether he was
pitching his claims too high On the other hand, to pitch them lov/er, to
agree to anything less than full power, was to court trouble with the
Party and the S.A. Hitler went to bed late, after listening to some music;
the decisive meeting with Papen and Schleicher was fixed for the next
day at noon.

What had been happening on the Government side of the fence since
the elections is moie difficult to follow. Despite the failure of the two
parties he had counted on for support— the Nationalists and the People’s
Party— Papen was less impressed by Hitler’s success than might have

‘ Othei accounts say that Hitiei was summoned to Berlin by telegiam, but Meissnei
states in his a(Tida\it (Nuremberg Document 3309-PS) that the interview with the
President v'as at the peisonal request of Hitler, transmitted to Meissner by Hitler’s
adjutant, Bruckner.

“ Goebbels page 136.

198

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTliMlY

been expected. Hitler had failed to win the majoiity he hoped for, and
Papen could argue that the results of the elections and the divisions in
the Reichstag were such as to justify the continuation of a presidential
cabinet, independent of the incoherent Party groupings. Indeed, Papen
saw no reason at all why he should resign in Hitler’s favour. He enjoyed
the favour of the President as no one ever had before, and the President
certainly had no wish to exchange the urbane and charming Papen for a
man whom he disliked and regarded as “queer.” Nazi violence during
and after the election had haidencd opinion against them, not only in
the circle round the President, but among the propertied classes
generally, and, most important of all, in the Army. Reports from abroad
of the possible repercussions of Hitler’s advent to power had impressed
the Cabinet and the Army, while for the President it was quite enough
that Hitler had broken his promise and attacked a government he had
undertaken to support. Finally, Papen, like most other political ob-
servers, was convinced that the Nazis had reached then peak and from
now on would begin to lose votes. If he was still prepared lo do a deal
with Hitler it must be on his, and not Hitler’s, terms.

How Hitler’s conversation with Schleicher on 5 August is to be
reconciled with this it is impossible lo say Perhaps he misunderstood
Schleicher; perliaps Schleicher misled him; peihaps Schleicher only
came round to the view that the Chancellorship for Hitler was out of the
question after their meeting on 5 August. The last seems the most
probable explanation. Certainly by 13 August, when Hiller met
Schleicher and Papen, the most they were prepared to offer him was the
’Vice-Chancellorship, together with the Prussian Ministry of the Interior ^
for one of his lieutenants. Hitler’s claim to power as the leader of the
largest party in the Reichstag was politely set aside. The President,
Papen told him, insisted on maintaining a presidential cabinet in power
and this could not be headed by a Party leader like Hitler. Hitler
rejected Papen's offer out of hand, lost his temper and began to shout.
He must have the whole power, nothing less. He talked wildly of mowing
down the Marxists, of a St. Bartholomew’s Night, and of three days’
freedom of the streets for the S A. Both Papen and Schleicher were
shocked by the raging uncontrolled figure who now confronted them.
They were scarcely reassured by his declaration that he wanted neither
the Foreign Ministry nor the Ministry of Defence, but only as much
power as Mussolini had claimed in 1922. While Hitler meant by this a
coalition government, including non-Fascists, such as Mussolini had
originally formed, they understood him to be claiming a dictatorship
in which he would govern alone without them — and, as the history of

199

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

Hitler’s Chancellorship in 1933 was later to show, they were funda-
mentally right.

After prolonged and heated argument, Hitler left in a rage of dis-
appointment, and drove back to Goebbels’ flat on the Reichskanzler-
platz. When a telephone call came from the President’s Palace at three
o’clock, Frick or Goebbels answered that there was no point in Hitler
coming, as a decision had already been arrived at. But the President
insisted. Nothing, it was said, would be finally decided till he had seen
Hitler— and Hitler, angry and shaken, went.

The President received him standing up and leaning on his stick. His
manner was cold. Hitler’s argument that he sought power by legal
means, but to obtain his ends must be given full control over govern-
ment policy, made no impression on the old man. According to Meiss-
ner, who was one of those present at the interview, the President retorted
that in the present tense situation he could not take the risk of trans-
ferring power to a new Party which did not command a majority and
which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.

At th's point Hindenburg, with a certain show of excitement, referred to
several iccent occurrences — clashes between the Nazis and the police, acts of
violence committed by Hitler’s followers against those of different opinions,
excesses against Jews and othei illegal acts. All these incidents had strength-
ened him in his conviction that there were numerous wild elements in the
Party beyond elfective control. Conflicts with other states had also to be
avoided under all circumstances. Hindenburg proposed to Hitler that he
should co-opeiatc with the other parties, in particular with the Right and
the Centre, and that he should give up the one-sided idea that he must have
' complete power. In co-operating with other parties he would be able to show
what he could achieve and improve upon. If he could show positive results,
he would acquire increasing influence even in a coalition government. This
would also be the best way to eliminate the widespread fear that a National
Socialist government would make ill use of its power. Hindenburg added that
he was ready to accept Hitler and his movement in a coalition government,
the piecise composition of which could be a subject of negotiation, but that
he could not take the responsibility of giving exclusive power to Hitler alone.
. . . Hitler, however, was adamant in his refusal to put himself m the position
of bargaining with the Icadeis of the other parties and of facing a coalition
government. ‘

Before the interview was over Hindenburg took the chance to remind
Hiller of the promise, which he had now broken, to support Papen’s
Government. In the words of the communique, “he gravely exhorted

1 Affidavit of Otto Meissner, Chief of the Presidential Chancery, 1920-1945, at
Nuremberg, 28 November, 1945. ND. 3309-PS. Cf also Otto Meissner: Staatsse-
kretai, pages 239-41.

200

THL MONTHS OF OPPORIUN'ITY

Herr Hitler to conduct the opposition on the part of the N S Party in a
chivalrous manner, and to bear in mind his responsibility to the Father-
land and to the German people.” For once, the Nazi propaganda ma-
chine was caught off its guard, and the Government’s damaging version
of the meeting was on the streets and halfway round the world before
the Nazis realized what was happening. It spoke of Hitler’s “demand for
entire and complete control of the State”; described the President’s
refusal to hand over power to “a mosement which had the intention of
using it in a one-sided manner”; referred explicitly to Hitler’s disregard
of the promises of support he had given before the election, and re-
peated Hindenburg’s warning to him on the way to conduct opposition.
Hitler’s humiliation in the eyes of the world, and of his own Party, was
complete.

If ever Hitler needed confiaence in his own judgment, it was now. A
false move could have destroyed his chances of success, and it was easy
to make such a move. The policy of legality appeared discredited and
bankrupt. Hitler had won such electoral support as no other party had
had in Germany since the First World Wai, he had kept strictly to the
letter of the Constitution and knocked on the door of the Chancellery,
only to have the door publicly slammed in his face. The way in which
his demands had been refused touched Hitler on a raw spot; once again
he had been treated as not quite good enough, an uneducated, rough
sort of fellow whom one could scarcely make Chancellor. This was *
Lossow, Kahr and Munich all over again, and his old hatred and
contempt for the bourgeoisie and their respectable politicians — top-hat,
frock-coat, tlie Herr Doktor with his diploma — flared up. He was angry
and resentful, feeling he had walked into a trap and was being laughed at
by the superior people who had made a fool of him. He had made the
mistake of playing his cards too high; now his bluff had been called and,
instead of sweeping into power, he had had to stand and listen to the
President giving him a dressing-down for bad manners and behaviour
not becoming a gentleman. In such a mood there was a great temptation
to show them he was not bluffing, to give tlie S.A. their head, and let the
smug bourgeois politicians see whether he was just a “i evolutionary of
the big mouth,” as Goebbels had once called Strasser.

There was strong pressure from the Party in the same direction. A
considerable section, strongly represented in the S.A., had always dis-
L H, — G"' 201

PARTY LEADEE, 1889-1939

liked the policy of legality, and had only been constrained to submit to
it with diflSculty. Now that legality had led to an open set-back and
humiliation they were even more restive and critical. The difficulties
with which Hitler was confronted are vividly illustrated by the case of
the Potempa murderers. The five Nazis responsible for the murder of
the Communist miner, Pietrzuch, were sentenced to death on 22 August.
All five men were members of the S.A., and the case had attracted the
widest publicity. The S A. were furious: this was to place the nationally-
minded Nazis and the anti-national Communists on the same footing,
the very reverse of what Hitler and the Nazis meant by justice. Hitler
had therefore to choose between offending public opinion and travesty-
ing his own policy of legality if he came out on the side of the murderers,
or risking a serious loss of confidence on the part of the S.A. if he failed
to intervene on their behalf, thus publicly admitting his inability to
defend his own followers. Hitler's answer was to send a telegram to the
five murderers: “My comrades: In the face of this most monstrous and
bloody sentence I feel myself bound to you in limitless loyalty. Fiom
this moment, youi liberation is a question of our honour. To fight
against a government which could allow this is our duty.” Pie followed
this with a violent manifesto in which he attacked Papen for deliberately
setting on foot a persecution of the “nationally minded” elements in
Germany: “German fellow countrymen: whoever among you agrees
with our struggle for the honour and liberty of the nation will understand
why I refused to take office in this Cabinet — Herr von Papen, I under-
stand your bloody ‘objectivity’ now. I wish that victory may come to
nationalist Germany and destruction upon its Marxist destroyers and
spoileis, but I am certainly not fitted to be the executioner of nationalist
fighters for the liberty of the German people.”’^ Roehm visited the
condemned men and assured them they would not be executed. Nor was
this an idle boast : a few days after Hitler’s telegram their sentences were
commuted to imprisonment for life.

There is no doubt that Hitler’s action shocked German public opinion,
for the justice of the sentence scarcely admitted dispute. Yet this was the
price which Hitler had to pay if he meant to keep his movement together
and preserve his own authority Nor is there any reason to suppose that
he felt the lea st compunction about the murder at Potempa ; the publicity
It had received was inconvenient, but kicking a political opponent to
death was well within the bounds of what Hitler meant by legality.

Nevertheless, although the Nazi Press and Nazi speeches show an
increasing radicalism from August up to the second Reichstag elections
^ Heidcn' Hisloiy of National Socialism, page 182.

202

THE MONTHS OF OPFORTONITY

in November, and although Hitler came out in uncompromising oppo-
sition to Papen’s Government, he still refused to depart from his tactics
of legality, or to let himself be provoked into the risk of attempting a
seizure of power by force. The veiy day of hi.s humiliating intei'vicw
with the President he called in Roehra and the other S.A. leaders to
insist that they must give up any idea of a putsch Goebbels, recording
the meeting, adds: “Their task is the most difficult. Who knows if their

units will be able to hold together The S.A. Chief of Staff (Roehm)

stays with us for a long time. He is extremely worried about the S.A.”*
To this line of policy Hitler remained faithful throughout; he was deter-
mined to avoid open conflict with the Army and to come to power
legally. The situation was not yet ripe, he told Goebbels; Papen and the
President were not yet convinced that they would have to take him on
his own terms, but it was still to a deal, and not to revolution, that he
looked as the means to power.

Shortly after the Potempa incident Hermann Rauschning. one of the
leaders of the Danzig Senate, visited Hitler at Maui Wachenfeld on the
Obersalzberg. The little party from Danzig found him moody and pre-
occupied, sitting on the veranda and staring out over the mountain
landscape. His silence was interspersed with excited and violent com-
ments, many of them on the character of the next war. Much of it was
prophetic; he laid great stress upon the psychological and subversive
preparations for wai — if these were carried out with care, peace would be
signed before the W'ar had begun. “The place of artillery preparation for
frontal attack will in future be taken by revolutionary propaganda, to
break down the enemy psychologically bcibie the armies begin to func- •
tion at all. . . . How to achieve the moral break-down of the enemy
before the war has started — that is the problem that interests me ... We
shall provoke a revolution in France as certainly as we shall not have one
in Germany. The French will hail me as their deliverer. The little man
of the middle class will acclaim us as the bearers of a just social order
and eternal peace. None of these people any longer want war or great-
ness.”-^ Rauschning could get little out of Hitler about the current
political situation. He was angry and uncertain, “divided,” Rauschning
thought, “between his own revolutionary temperament which impelled
him to passionate action, and his political astuteness which warned him
to take the safe road of political combination and postpone his revenge
till later.”^ Hitler talked much of ruthlessness and was inclined to lash
* Goebbels- pages 139-40

“ Hermann Rauschning. Hitler Speaks (London, 1939), pages 19-21.

’Ibid, page 27.

203

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

out at anyone who irritated him. He was scornful and impatient of
economic problems on which Rauschnmg tried to draw him: if the will
were there the problems would solve themselves, he retorted. Only when
they came to discuss Danzig did Hitler show any interest m the actual
position in Germany. His first question was whether Danzig had an
extradition agreement with Germany, and it was soon clear that his
mind was occupied with the possibility of having to go underground,
if the Government should move against the Party and ban it. In that
case Danzig, with its independent status under the League of Nations,
might well offer a useful asylum.

As they left to drive to Munich Goebbels came stumping up the path
to the house, summoned from Berlin for more anxious consultations on
the policy to be pursued if the Party was to get out of the pohtical
cul-de-sac into which it had been manoeuvred.

Desultory contacts with the Government continued through the rest of
the summer and into the autumn, but they led nowhere. Papen was still
confident that by a process of “weanng-down” the Nazis, by keeping
them waiting on the threshold of power, he could force Hitler to accept
his terms. It was a question of who would crack first.

In August and September the Nazis made an approach to the Centre
Party: together they could command a majority in the Reichstag, and
Hitler, amongst other proposals, suggested that they should put through
a joint motion deposing the President and providing for a new election.
On 25 August Goebbels noted: “We have got into touch with the Centre
Party, if meiely by way of bringing pressure to bear upon our adver-
saries. . . . There are three possibilities. Firstly: Presidential Cabinet.
Secondly: Coalition. Thirdly: Opposition. ... In Berlin I ascertain that
Schleicher already knows of our feelers in the direction of the Centre.
That is a way of bringing pressure to bear on him. I endorse and further
it. Perhaps we shall succeed thus in expediting the first of these solu-
tions.”^ One practical result of these talks was the election of Goering
to the presidency of the Reichstag by the combined votes of the Nazis,
the Centre and the Nationalists on 30 August.

Papen refused to be impressed by the threat of a Nazi-Centre com-
bination against him. He was firmly convinced that the prolongation of
the deadlock was working to the disadvantage of the Nazis, and that in
any new elections they were bound to lose votes. He believed that, in the
threat to dissolve the Reichstag and force a further appeal to the country,
he held the ace of trumps, and, if necessary, he was resolved to play it.

‘ Goebbels. pages 142-3.

204

THE MONTHS 01' OPPORl UNITY

The climax of tliese weeks of intrigue and manoeuvring came on
12 September. After the election of Gocring to its preHdency on 30
August the Reichstag had adjourned until the i2th, the first full session
since the elections at the end of July. Foreseeing trouble, the Chancellor
procured a decree for the Chamber’s d!.ssolution from the President in
advance. With this up his sleeve, he felt in complete command of the
situation. The actual course of events on 12 September, however, took
both sides by surprise. When the session opened, before a crowded
audience in the diplomatic and public galleries, the Communist deputy
Torgler moved a vote of censure on the Government as an amendment
to the Order of the Day. It had been agreed amongst the other parlies
that there was nothing to be gained b> sucli a move, and that one of the
Nationalist deputies should foimaliy oppose it, the objection of one
member being sufficient to prevent an amendment to the Order of the
Day without due notice. When the moment came, however, the Nation-
alists made no move, and amid a puzzled and embarrassed silence
Frick rose to his feet to ask for half an hour’s delay. In the excited crowd
which filled the lobbies and corridors it was said that Papen had decided
to dissolve, and that it was in agrecmeiu wuii him that the Nationalists
had gone back on the original plan. At a hurried nicding in the palace
of the Reichstag President, Goering, Hitler, Stia .scr and Flick decided
to out-smart the Chancellor and defeat the Government before the
Chamber could be dissolved.

Immediately the deputies had taken their .seats again Goering, as
President, announced that a vote would be taken at once on the Com-
munist motion of no-confidence. Papen, rising in protest, requested the
floor. But Goering, studiously affecting not to see the Chancellor,
looked in the other direction, and the voting began. White with anger,
Papen then produced the traditional red portfolio w'hich contained the
decree of dissolution, and had it placed on Goering’s table, while he
and the other members of the Government ostentatiously marched out
of the Chamber. Still Goering had no eyes for anything but the voting.
The Communist vote of no-confidence was cairied by 513 votes to 32,
and Goering promptly declared the Government overthrown. As for
the scrap of paper laid on his desk, which he now found time to read,
it was, he declared, obviously worthless since it had been countersigned
by a Chancellor who had now been deposed.

Whether— as the Nazis affected to believe— the elaborate farce in the
Reichstag, and the almost unanimous vote against him, had really
damaged Papen or not, for the moment the Chancellor had the advan-

205

PARTY LEADEP, 1889-1933

tage. For Papen insisted that, as the decree of dissolution had already
been signed and placed on the table before the vote took place, the result
of the motion was invalid. The Reichstag was dissolved, after sitting for
less than a day, and the Nazis faced the fifth major electoral contest of
the year.

Privately they were only too well aware that Papen was right and that
they must count on a reduced vote. Hitler refused to consider a com-
promise, and accepted von Papen’s challenge, but there was no dis-
guising the fact that this would be the toughest fight of all. On 16
September Goebbels wrote with a heavy heart: “Now we are m for
elections again! One sometimes feels this sort of thing is going on for

ever Our adversaries count on our losing morale, and getting fagged

out. But we know this and will not oblige them. We would be lost and
all our work would have been in vain if we gave in now . . . , even if the
struggle should seem hopeless.”"- A month later he admitted: “The
organization has naturally become a bit on edge through these evei-
lasting elections. It is as jaded as a battalion which has been too long
in the trenches, and just as nervy. The numerous difiiculties are wearing
me out.”-^

One of the worst difiiculties was lack of money. Four elections since
March had eaten deep into the Paity’s resources, and the invaluable
contributions from outside had lately begun to dwindle. Hitler’s refusal
to come to terras, his arrogant claim for the whole power, his con-
donation of violence at Potempa, the swing towards Radicalism in the
campaign against the “Government of Reaction” — all these factors,
^ combined, no doubt, with strong hints from von Papen to industrial
and business circles not to ease the blockade, had placed the Party in a
tight spot. In the middle of October Goebbels complained: “Money is
extraordinarily difficult to obtain. All gentlemen of ‘Property and
Education’ are standing by the Government.”-"

In these circumstances it was only Hitler’s determination and leader-
ship that kept the Party going His confidence in himself never wavered.
When the Gauleiters assembled at Munich early in October he used all
his arts to put new life and energy into them. “He is great and surpasses us
all,” Goebbels wrote enthusiastically. “He raises the Party’s spirits out of
the blackest depression. With him as leader the movement must succeed.”

Another picture of the Nazi leader at this time is given by Kurt
Ludecke.' Ludecke had gone to visit Hitler in Munich at the end of

1 Goebbels: page 157. “Ibid, pages 171-2. “Ibid., page 172.

‘ Kurt Ludecke I Knew Hitlci, chapters XXVII-XXVIII.

206

THE ^;ONTHS OF OPPORTLXITY

September, and, after an evening spent m Haler’s company at his
Munich flat listening to him denounce the influence of Christianity, he
accompanied him by car to a mass Hitler Youth demonstration at
Potsdam.

Ludecke found Hitlci imperturbable and confident, already talking of
what he would do when he became Chancellor. They started out from
Munich in the late afternoon in three powerful Mercedes, one of them
filled with Hiller’s bodyguard of eight, armed with revolvers and
hippopotamus whips, undci the command of Sepp Dietrich, later to
achieve fame as an S.S. general. Hitler, although he nc\er took the wheel
himself, had a passion for speed, and they drove fast across Bavaria
towards the frontiers of Saxony. Ludecke talked about America, and
Hitler, who had never been out of Germany, questioned him eagerly.
As a boy he had read Karl May’s stories about the Red Indians, and they
found a common interest in the adventures of Old Shatterluind and
Winnetou. Every time Hitler dozed he would rouse himself again: “Go
on, go on— 1 mustn’t fall asleep. I’m listening.” At Nuiemberg Julius
Stretcher was waiting, while at Berncck, wheie they paused for a brief
sleep in an inn, Goermg met them and stayed talking with Hitler until
4 a m. Soon after nine they were on the road again, a road of which
Hitler knew eveiy bend and dip, halting for a picnic lunch and then
driving through the Communist districts of Saxony. At one point they
passed a line of trucks filled with Communist dernonstiators. “We
sloveed down. It was apparent that because of the slate of the road we
were going to have to pass them at low speed. 1 could see Sepp Dietrich
whistling through his teeth. Everybody stopped talking, and I noticed
that the right hand of each of the men in the car in front disappeared at
his side. We crept by. Eveiyone, the Fuehrer included, looked slraighi
into the faces of the Communists.” He was recognized and hissed at,
but nobody dated to interfere with the bodyguard

At Potsdam more than a hundred thousand biiys and girls of the
Hitler Youth had gatheicd in the torch-lit stadium. After a brief address
Hiller spent the rest of the night trying to find accommodation for the
thousands who had arrived unexpectedly. In the morning the review
began at eleven o’clock on a sunny October day. From then until six
o’clock in the evening, for seven hours, Hitler stood to take the salute
as the steady columns of brov/n-shirted Hitler Youth marched past him.
Once he came over to Ludecke and said: “You see? No fear — the
German race is on the march ” Later that night, after Hitler had dined
with Prince Auwi, one of the Kaiser’s sons who had joined the S.A.,
1 udecke saw him again in the tram for Munich. “As we stepped into the

207

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

railway carriage, Bruckner, Hitler’s adjutant, blocked the way : ‘Leave him
alone,’ he said. ‘The man’s played out.’ He was sitting in the corner of the
compartment, utterly spent. Hitler motioned weakly to us to come in. He
looked for a second into my eyes, clasped my hand feebly, and I left.
“When next I saw him he was Chancellor.”^

The genuineness of the Nazis’ radical campaign against the “caste
government of Reaction” was put to the test a few days before the elec-
tion by the outbreak of a transport strike in Berlin. The strike was caused
by a cut m wages as part of Papen’s policy of meeting the crisis. It was
disavowed by the Social Democrats and the Trade Unions, but was
backed by the Communists. To many people’s surprise the Nazis joined
the Communists in supporting the strikers. Goebbels, in his diary, is
quite frank about the reasons: “The entire Press is furious with us and
calls It Bolshevism; but as a matter of fact we had no option. If we had
held ourselves aloof from this strike our position among the working
classes would have been shaken Here a great occasion offers once again
of demonstrating to the public that the line we have taken up in pohtics
IS dictated by a true sympathy with the people, and for this reason the
N S. party purposely eschews the old bourgeois methods.’*^

The Nazi move, hov/ever, had other consequences as well. The next
day Goebbels wrote: “Scarcity of money has become chronic. . . . The
strike is grist to the mill of the bourgeois Press. They are exploiting it
against us unconscionably. Many of our staunch partisans, even, are
beginning to have their doubts. . . . The consequences of the strike are
daily putting us into new predicaments
, The election campaign came to an end on the evening of 5 November.
“Last attack,” Goebbels commented. “Desperate drive of the Party
against defeat. We succeed in obtaining ten thousand marks at the very
last moment. These are to be thrown into the campaign on Saturday
afternoon. We have done all possible. Now let Fate decide”^

VII

The Nazi leaders were under no illusions about the election results.
The fifth election of the year found a mood of stubborn apathy growing
among the German people, a feeling of indifference and disbelief, against
which propaganda and agitation beat in vain. It was precisely on this
that Papen had calculated and his calculation was not far wrong. For the

' Ludccke pages 478-9. * Goebbels: 2 November, page 181.

“ Ibid., page 182. * Ibid., page 184.

208

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

first time since 1930 the Nazis lost votes, two millions of the 13,745,000
they had polled in July, 1932, cutting their percentage from 37'3 to 33’ 1.
Their seats in the Reichstag were reduced from 230 out of 608 to 196
out of 584, although they still remained by far the largest party in the
Chamber.

This set-back was thrown into sharper relief by the success of two
other parties. The Nationalists, who had been steadily losing votes since
1924, suddenly raised the number of their scats from 37 to 32, and the
Communists, who polled close on six million votes, secured a hundred
seats in the Reichstag. The Communist success was paiticularly striking
for it showed that the Nazis were bcgiisnuig to lose their hold on that
current of revolt which had so far carried them forwaid. It was no secret
that the bulk of the Communists’ new voters were disilluraoned sup-
porters of the Nazis and the Social Democrats, lookuig for a genuinely
revolutionary party.

Papen was delighted with the results, which he regarded as a moral
victory for his government and a heavier defeat for Hitler than the
figures actually showed. The Nazi movement had always claimed to be
different from the other parties, to be a movement of national resur-
gence. Now its spell was broken, the emptiness of its claims exposed and
Hitler himself reduced to the proportions of any olher politician
scrambling for power. Its fall, Papen was convinced, would be as rapid
as its rise. If Hitler wanted power he had bettei come to terms before
his electoral assets dwindled still further.

At first, therefore, it looked as if the November elections would be
followed by a repetition of wiiat had happened after 31 July, with the
odds against Hitler lengthened, and a much gieatei likelihood of his
being forced to accept von Papen’s teims. In tins third peiiod, however,
it was Papen wlio overplayed his hand, with unexpected results.

Determined, in spue of the electoral sel-back, not to walk into another
trap like that of 13 August Hitler sat tight and refused to be drawn by
Papen’s first indirect approaches. On 9 November Goebbcls recorded
in his diary; “The Wilhelinstrasse has sent an emissary to the leader
The same conditions are proposed as those suggested on 13 August (i e.,
the Vice-Chancellorship), but he remains inexoiahle.” Three days later
he wrote: “The leader is keeping away from Berlin. The Wilhelinstrasse
waits for him m vain; and that is well. We must not give in as we did
on 13 August.”^

On 13 November Papen wrote officially to Hitler suggesting that they
should bury their differences and renew negotiations for a concentration
‘ Gocbbels. pages 188 and 190.

209

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

of all the nationally minded parties.’ Hitler let a couple of days pass,
and replied at length on the 16 th with a letter which was an open rebuff.
He laid down four conditions for any negotiations : that they should be
conducted m writing, so that there could be no disagreement this time
about what was said; that the Chancellor should take full responsibility
for his actions, and not try to dodge behind the figure of the President
as he had m August; that he, Hitler, should be told in advance what
policy he was being asked to support, “since, in spite of the closest
consideration, I have never quite understood the present Government’s
programme”; and, finally, that the Chancellor should assure him that
Hugenberg, the leader of the Nationalists, was piepared to enter a
national bloc.- Hitlei’s reply ruled out the possibility of any further
negotiations between himself and Papen at this stage. Indeed, he had
already issued a manifesto immediately after the elections in which,
underlining the fact that ninety per cent of the nation were ranged
against the Government, he had charged Papen with the responsibility
for the increase in the Communist vote. By his reactionary policy.
Hitler declared, Papen was driving the masses to Bolshevism. There
could be no compromise with such a regime.

While this exchange was taking place, Papen, who was perfectly
prepared to plunge the country into still another election in order to
force the Nazis to their knees, unexpectedly encountered opposition in
his own Cabinet, notably from Schleicher. Not only was Schleicher
irritated by Papen’s increasing independence and the close relationship
he had established with the President, but he began to see in Papen’s
personal quarrel with Hitler, and his determination to prosecute it to the
'limit, an obstacle to securing that concentration of the “national”
forces which was, in Schleicher’s view, the only reason for ever having
made Papen Chancellor. Papen was now beginning to talk confidently
of governing the country by a dictatorship, if Hitler would not come to
his senses, Schleicher, on the other hand, had not failed to notice the
ominous increase in the Communist vote, the growing radicalism of the
Nazis and their co-operation with the Communists in the Berlin trans-
port strike. He was more than ever alarmed at the prospect of a civil
war in which both the Communists and the Nazis might be on the other
side of the barricade. It did not take long for him to reach the conclusion
that Papen was becoming more of a hindrance than an asset to the policy
of a deal with the Nazis which was still his own objective.

Schleicher found support for his views in the Cabinet, and Papen was
urged to resign, in order to allow the President to consult the Party
‘N.D D-633. =ND.D.-634.

210

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

leaders and try to find a way out of the deadlock, which appeared to be
impossible so long as he remained in office. With considerable shrewd-
ness Papen swallowed his anger and agreed, he was confident that,
m any case, negotiations with Hitler and the other Party leaders would
not remove the deadlock, and that after their failure he would return
to office with his hand strengthened. He would then be able to insist on
whatever course he saw fit to recommend. His own influence over the
President, and the fact that Hindenburg was obviously irritated by the
whole affair, saw no reason at all why he should part with Papen, and
had become increasingly suspicious of Schleicher, augured well for the
success of these calculations. Accordingly, on 17 November, Papen
tendered the resignation of his Cabinet, and the President, on his advice,
requested Hitler to call on him.

Events followed the course Papen had foreseen. On 18 November
Hitler arrived in Berlin and spent some houis in discussion with
Goebbels, Frick and Strasser; Goermg was hastily summoned from
Rome, where he had been engaged in talks v/ith Mussolini. The next
day, cheered by the crowds. Hitler drove to the Palace. The conver-
sation was at least more friendly than the chilly interview of 13 August.
He was invited to sit down and stayed for over an hour. A second
conference followed on the 21st. The gist of Hindenburg’s offer was
contained in three sentences from the official recoid of the discussion
on the 21st. “You have declared,” the President said, “that you will
only place your movement at the disposal of a government of which
you, the leader of the Party, are the head. If I consider your proposal,

I must demand that such a Cabinet should have a majority in the Reich-
stag. Accordingly, I ask you, as the leader of the largest party, to ascer!
tain if, and on what conditions, you could obtain a secure workable
majority in the Reichstag on a definite programme.”

On the face of it this was a fair offer, but it was so designed as co make
It impossible for Hitler to succeed. For Hitler could not secure a majority
in the Reichstag. The Centre Party, m view of their vendetta with Papen,
might be willing to join a coalition with Hitler— Goering was already
engaged in negotiating with the Centre leaders — but Hugenberg and the
Nationalists would never come in. In any case, what Hitler wanted was
to be made, not a parliamentary Chancellor, shackled by a coalition,
but a presidential Chancellor, with the same sweeping powers as the
President had given to Papen. To this the old man sternly refused to
agree. If Germany had to be governed by the emergency powers of a
presidential Chancellor, then there was no point in replacing Papen; the
only argument in favour of his resignation was that Hitler would be

211

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

able to provide something which Papen had failed to secure, namely, a
parliamentary majority.

A lengthy correspondence between Hitler and the President’s State
Secretary, Meissner, failed to alter the terms of the offer. Papen’s
presidential cabinet, Meissner pointed out, had resigned “because it
could not find a majority in parliament to tolerate its measures. Conse-
quently a new presidential Cabinet would be an improvement only if
it could eliminate this deficiency.”^ In his final letter on the 24th Meissner
said that the President was unable to give the powers of a presidential
Chancellor to a Party leader “because such a Cabinet is bound to de-
velop into a party dictatorship and increase the state of tension pre-
vailing among the German people.” For this the President could not
take the responsibility before his oath and his conscience. Hitler could
only retort that the negotiations had been foredoomed to fail in view of
Hindenburg’s resolve to keep Papen, whatever the cost. There was
nothing left but to admit defeat and break off the negotiations. Once
again the policy of legality had led to public humiliation; once again the
leader returned from the President’s palace empty-handed and out-
manoeuvred.

Discussions between the President and other Party leaders produced
no better result. But at this point Papen’s calculations began to go
wrong. For Schleicher, too, had not been idle, and through Gregor
Strasser he was now sounding out the possibility of the Nazis joining a
Cabinet in which, not Papen, but Schleicher himself would take the
Chancellorship. The offer was communicated to Hitler in Munich, and
non the evening of 29 November Hitler left by tram for the north.
According to one version. Hitler was inclined to accept and was already
on his way to Berlin when he was intercepted by Goering at Jena,
persuaded to go no farther and taken off to Weimar for a conference
with the othei Nazi leaders For once the Nazi version, as it is given by
Otto Dietrich and Goebbels, seems more probable according to this,
Hitler declined to be drawn by Schleicher’s move and called a conference
of his chief lieutenants at Weimar, where he was already due to take part
in the election campaign for the forthcoming Thurmgian elections. At
this Weimar conference, on 1 December, Strasser came out strongly in
favour of joining a Schleicher Cabinet and found some support from
Frick Goering and Goebbels, however, were opposed to such a course,
and Hiller accepted their point of view. A long talk with an officer,

* The cci respondence is printed in full m Jahrbuch des offentlichen Recks, vol. 21
(1933-1934).

212

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

whom Schleicher had sent to see Hitler at Weimar, failed to change this
decision; Hitler still held out and was only prepared to make a deal on
his own terms. Goebbels wrote in his diary: “Anyone can see that the
‘System’ is breathing its last, and that it would be a crime to form an
alliance with it at the present moment.”^

Meanwhile, on the evening of 1 Decembei, Schleicher and Papen saw
Hindenburg together. Papen’s plan was perfectly clear: the attempt to
find an alternative government had failed, and he proposed that he
should resume office, prorogue the Reichstag indefinitely, and prepare
a reform of the constitution to provide for a new electoral law and the
establishment of a second Chamber. Until that could be carried out he
would proclaim a state of emergency, govern by decree, and use force
to smash any opposition. Schleicher’s objections were threefold: such
a course was unconstitutional; it involved a danger of civil war, since
the vast majority of the nation had declared themselves emphatically
opposed to Papen in two elections; and it was unnecessary. He an-
nounced that he was convinced he himself could obtain a parliamentary
majority in the Reichstag.

From the discussion that followed Papen emerged triumphant: the
President entrusted him with the formation of a new presidential
cabinet.'^ But Schleicher had the last word. He now declared, as the
representative of the Army, that the Army no longer had confidence in
von Papen and was not prepared to take the risk of civil war — ^with
both the Nazis and the Communists in opposition — which Papen’s
policy would entail. At a crucial cabinet meeting on the morning of
2 December, Schleicher developed this argument and produced one of
his ofiicers. Colonel Ott, to provide detailed evidence in its support. In
November Schleicher had ordered the Ministry of Defence to discuss
with the police and Army authorities what steps would have to be taken
in the event of civil war. Their conclusion was that, in view of the possi-
bility of a surpiise attack by Poland at the same time as risings by the
Communists and the Nazis and a general strike, the State did not possess
sufficient forces to guarantee order. They must therefore recommend the
Government not to declare a state of emeigency." Whether this was a
just appreciation of the situation or not — Schleicher’s production of the

1 Goebbels" page 200.

“Papen’s Interrogation at Nuiemberg, 3 Septembei, 1945; Papen’s examination
in court, Nmemherg Proceedin;;s, Part XVI, pages 269-72; and Panen's letter of
10 Apnl, 1948, to M. Frangois-Poncct, quoted by Castellan, pages 20-3.

* See in addition to the sources already cited, Castellan, pages 23-5, in which
Colonel Ott’s account of his report, in a letter of November, 1946, is reproduced in
full; Meissner’s Affidavit, 28 November, 1945 (3309-PS), and the repoit of the British
Ambassador, 7 December, 1932, in Brit. Doc , Second Senes, vol. IV, No 44.

213

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

report at this moment was too pat not to arouse suspicion — ^his authority
as the representative of the Army was incontestable. Once again the
Army had shown itself to be the supreme arbiter in German politics,
and Papen was left without a reply. “I went to Hmdenburg,” Papen
told the Court at Nuremberg, “and reported to him. Herr von Hinden-
burg, deeply stirred by my report, said to me: ‘I am an old man, and I
cannot face a civil war of any sort in my country. If General von
Schleicher is of this opinion, then I must — much as I regret it — ^with-
draw the task with which I charged you last night’.”^

Von Papen had only two consolations, but they were to prove sub-
stantial. At last Schleicher, the man who had used his influence behind
the scenes to unseat Muller, Groener, Bruening, and now Papen, was
forced to come out into the open and assume personal responsibility for
the success or failure of his plans. On 2 December General von
Schleicher became the last Chancellor of pre-Hitler Germany, and—
Papen’s second consolation — he took office at a time when his credit
with the President, on which he had drawn so lavishly in the past year,
was destroyed. The old man, who had tolerated the intrigues which had
led to the dismissal of Groener and Bruening, neither forgot nor forgave
the methods by which Schleicher turned out Papen. Let von Schleicher
succeed if he could, but if he failed, and turned to the President for
support, he need expect no more loyalty or mercy than he had shown his
own victims.

VIII

With the opening of the fourth and final period, from Schleicher’s
Chancellorship which began on 2 December, 1932, to Hitler’s which
began on 30 January, 1933, this tortuous story of political intrigue
draws to its close. Yet the most surprising twists of all were reserved
for the last chapter.

Schleicher had now to make good his claim that he could succeed
where Papen had failed, and produce that national front, including the
Nazis, which had been his consistent aim for two years. For all his love
of intrigue and lack of scruple, Schleicher was an intelligent man.
Without Papen’s class prejudices he had a far clearer conception than
any of the men around the President of the depth and seriousness of the
crisis through which Geiman society had been passing since the end of
1929. He had never fallen into ihe error of supposing that “strong”
government by itself was a lemedy for the crisis, nor did he under-
'■ Nuienibeii; Pioceediiigs, Part XVI, page 272.

214

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

estimate the force which lay behind such extremist movements as the
Nazis and the Communists. His aim, stated again and again in these
years, was to harness one of these movements, the Nazis, to the service
of the State.

Schleicher’s closest contact in the Nazi Party at this time was Gregor
Strasser. If Hitler represented the will to power in the Party, and Roehm
its preference for violence, Gregor Strasser represented its idealism —
a brutalized idealism certainly, but a genuine desire to make a clean
sweep. To Strasser National Socialism was a real political movement,
not, as it was to Hitler, the instrument of his ambition. He took its
programme seriously, as Hitler never had, and he was the leader of the
Nazi Left-wing which, to the annoyance of Hitler's industrialist friends,
still dreamed of a German Socialism and still won votes for the Party by
its anti-capitalist radicalism. But Strasser, if he was much more to the
Left than the other Party leaders, was also the head of the Party Organ-
ization, more in touch with feeling throughout the local branches than
anyone else, and more impressed than any of the other Icadeis by the
set-backs of the autumn, culminating in the loss of two million votes
at the November elections. Strasser was particularly impressed by the
disillusionment of the more radical elements in the Party and their
tendency to drift towards the Communists. He became convinced that
the only course to save the Party from going to pieces was to make a
compromise and get into power at once, e\'en as part of a coalition.
Hitler’s attitude he regarded as illogical. The Nazi leader's insistence on
legality offended and roused the suspicions of those who wanted a
levolution, while his uncompromising demand for “all or nothing’’
defeated his own policy when he w'as offeicd a share in power Strasser
w'as a convert to the tactics of legality, but saw the Party’s chance to
influence government policy and cany out at least a part of its pro-
gramme being sacrificed to Hitler’s ambition and his refusal to accept
anything less than “the whole power.”

This division of opinion in the Paity leadership, and the strains to
which it gave rise, had been present for some time. Goebbels, w'ho was
Strasser’s sworn enemy, records Hiller’s first open mention of the
conflict on 31 August. Tiicreafter there arc a dozen rcfei cnees to
Strasser’s “intrigues” between the beginning of September and the
beginning of December.

The day after Schleicher became Chancellor he sent for Gregor
Strasser and made an offer to the Nazis. Having failed to get Hitler to
discuss a deal, Schleicher suggested that Strasser himself should enter
his Cabinet as Vice-Chancellor and Minister-President of the Prussian

215

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

State Government. If he accepted, Strasser could take over Schleicher's
plans for dealing with unemployment and help to establish co-operation
with the Trade Unions. Schleicher’s programme was a broad front
extending from the reasonable Nazis to the reasonable Socialists, with
an energetic programme to reduce unemployment. The offer to Strasser
was a clever move on Schleicher’s part. Not only was it attractive to
Strasser as a way out of the Party’s difficulties, but it would almost
certainly split the Party leadership. In that case, if Hitler stood out
Strasser might agree to come into the Cabinet on his own responsibility,
and carry his following out of the Party. The same day, 3 December,
elections m Thuringia showed nearly a forty per cent drop in the Nazi
vote since July. This added force to Strasser’s arguments for accepting
Schleicher’s offer in order at all costs to avoid further national elections.

On 5 December a conference of the Party leaders was held in the
Kaiserhof. Strasser found support from Frick, the leader of the Nazi
group in the Reichstag, whose members were powerfully impressed by
the Thuringian results and the threat that they might lose their seats
and salaries in a new election. Goering and Goebbels, however, were
hotly opposed, and earned Hitler with them. Hitler laid down terms for
discussion with Schleicher, but placed the negotiations with the Chan-
cellor in the hands of Goering and Frick — according to another version,
of Goering and Rochra— deliberately excluding Strasser. On 7 December
Hitler and Strasser had a further conversation in the Kaiserhof, in the
course of which Hitlci bitterly accused Strasser of bad faith, of trying to
go behind his back and oust him from the leadership of the Party.
Strasser angrily retorted that he had been entirely loyal, and had only
"thought of the interests of the Party. Going back to his room in the Hotel
Excelsior, he sat down and wrote Hitler a long letter in which he resigned
from his position in the Party Fie reviewed the whole course of their
relationship since 1925, attacked the irresponsibility and inconsistency
of Hitler’s tactics, and prophesied disaster if he persisted in them.

It IS possible that if Strasser had stayed to fight out his quarrel with
Hitler he could have carried a majority of the Party with him, although
it would be unwise to underestimate Hitler’s wiliness when in a corner.
There is no doubt that Hitler was shaken by Strasser’s revolt, as he had
never been by any electoral defeat The threat to his own authority in
thcj, Party touched him more closely than the loss of votes or the failure
of negotiations had ever done. Goebbels wrote in his diaiy: “In the
evening the leader comes to us. It is difficult to be cheerful. We are all
rather downcast, in view of the danger of the whole Party falling to
pieces and all our work being in vain. We are confronted with the great

216

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

test Phone call from Ley. The situation in the Party is getting worse

from hour to hour. The leader must immediately return to the Kaiserhof.

. . . Treachery, treachery, treachery! For hours the leader paces up and
down the room in the hotel. Suddenly he stops and says: ‘If the Party
once falls to pieces, I shall shoot myself without more ado!’

But Strasser had always lacked the toughness to challenge Hitler
outught, as his earlier capitulations had shown. When his brother,
Otto, had defied Hitler and been cast off, Gregor Strasser had made his
peace and remained. He had never planned a revolt such as Hitler
suspected, and now, instead of rallying the latent opposition to Hitler in
the Party, he cursed the whole business and vanished without a word.
While Frick searched anxiously for him in Beihn, he caught the train to
Munich, and took his family off for a holiday in Italy.

Strasser’s disappearance gave Hitler lime to recover his confidence
and quell any signs of mutiny. The Party’s Political Organization
department was broken up, Ley taking over part of its duties under
Hitler’s direct supervision, the rest being tiansferrcd to Gocbbels and
Darr6. A declaration condemning Strasser in the sharpest terms was
submitted to a full meeting of the Party leaders and Gauleiters in the
Palace of the President of the Reichstag on 9 December. When Feder,
who shared Strasscr’s Socialist ideals, refused to accept it, he was told
to sign or get out. He signed. Hitler used all his skill to appeal to the
loyalty of his old comrades and brouglit tears to their eyes. With a sob
in his voice he declared that he would never have believed Stiasser guilty
of such treachery. Julius Strciclier blubbered: “Maddening that
Strasser could do this to our leader.” At the end of this emotional
tour deforce “the Gauleiters and Deputies,” Goebbcls records, “burst"
into a spontaneous ovation for the leader. All shake hands with him,
promising to carry on until the very end and not to renounce the great
Idea, come what may. Strasser now is completely isolated, a dead man.
A small circle of us remain with the leader, who is quite cheerful and
elated again. The feeling that the whole Party is standing by him with a
loyalty never hitherto displayed has raised his spirits and invigorated
him.”“ A few days later, on 15 December, a Central Party Commission
was set up under Hess to supervise and co-ordinate the policy of the
Party throughout Germany.

While Hitler worked to restore the threatened unity of his Party,
Schleicher continued his talks with the other Party leaders, including
representatives of the Trade Unions. The failure to bring in the Nazis at
'Goebbels: page 206 *Ibid, page 209.

217

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

this stage did not unduly depress him On 15 December he expounded
his plans m a broadcast to the nation. He asked his listeners to forget
that he was a soldier, and to think of him as “the impartial trustee of
the interests of all in an emergency.” He supported neither Capitalism
nor Socialism, he declared: his aim was to provide work. A Reich
Commissioner had been appointed to draw up plans for reducing
unemployment; meanwhile there would be no new taxes or further
wage cuts. The system of agricultural quotas which Papen had intro-
duced for the benefit of the big landowners would be ended; a huge
programme of subsidized land settlement m the eastern provinces would
be undertaken; and the Government would control prices, in the first
place those of meat and coal The Chancellor followed his speech by
the restoration of recent wage and relief cuts, and the grant of greater
freedom of the Press and of assembly.

In the event, Schleicher fell between two stools. He failed to overcome
the distrust and hostility of Social Democrats and the Trade Unions, or
even of the Centre, which, remembering his part in the overthrow of
Brucmng, was not converted to his support by his advocacy of a policy
not unlike Bruening’s own. At the same time he stirred up the violent
opposition of powerful interests in industry and agriculture. The
industrialists disliked his conciliatory attitude towards labour; the
farmers were furious at his reduction of agricultural protection; the East
Elbian landowners denounced his plans for land settlement as “agrarian
Bolshevism” with the same uncompromising class spirit they had shown
towards Brueiiing.

Schleicher made the great mistake of underestimating the forces
• opposed to him. In January, 1933, Kurt von Schuschnigg, at that time
Austrian Minister of Justice, paid a call on the Chancellor while visiting
Berlin. “General von Schleicher,” he wrote later, “showed himself to
be exceptionally optimistic with regard to the state of affairs in the Reich,
of which he talked in very lively tenns, paiticularly as regards its
economic and political prospects. I remember clearly the words he used
in this connection: he was endeavouring, he said, to establish contacts
throughout the trade-union organizations, and hoped in this way to
build up a sound political platform, which would ensure a peaceful and
prosperous development of the political situation. Herr Hitler was no
longer a problem, his movement had ceased to be a political danger,
and the whole problem had been solved, it was a thing of the past.”^
Schuschnigg was so surprised by Schleicher’s optimism, which no one

’ Kuit von Schuschnigg Diednal Ocsteneicli, English translation, Faiewell
Austna (London, 1938), pages 165-6.

.218

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

else m Berlin shared, that he made a note of the conversation and its
date: it was 15 January. A fortnight later Schleicher was to be sadly
disillusioned.

The basis of the Chancellor’s confidence was his belief that his enemies
were unable to combine against him. So far as the Nazis were concerned
there were good grounds for believing them to be a declining force.
The last three months before Hitler came to power— November and
December, 1932, January, 1933— marked the lowest point of Hitler’s
fortunes since he had broken into national politics in 1930. The most
immediate problem was shortage of funds. The Nazi organization —
an embryonic State within the framework of the old State, as Hitler
claimed — ^was highly expensive to run. The Party was filled with
thousands of officials who kept their places on the Party pay-roll often
without clearly defined functions, often with duties that were either
unnecessary or duplicated by someone else The S A., the hard core of
which consisted of unemployed men who lived in S.A. messes and
barracks, must have cost immense sums, however limited the amount
spent on each man. Even at the rate of one mark a day, which is probably
too low, that would mean an expenditure of the order of two million
eight hundred thousand marks a week. Goeobels’ own comments on
party finances are despondent:

II November — Receive a report on the financial situation of the Berlin
organization. It is hopeless. Nothing but debts and obligations, together
with the complete impossibility of obtaining any reasonable sum of money
after this defeat.

10 Decembei — ^Tho financial situation of Gau Berlin is hopeless. We must
institute strict measures of economy, and make it self-supporting. •

22 December — We must cut down the salaries of our Gaulciteis, as other-
wise we cannot manage to make shift with our finances.’^

This was the time when S A men were sent into the stieets to beg for
money, rattling their boxes and asking passers-by to spare something
“for the wicked Nazis.” Konrad Heiden speaks of debts of twelve million
marks, others of twenty million.

Moie serious was the sense of defeatism and demoralization in the
Party. The very day after the loyal demonstration in Goering’s palace,
Goebbels noted: “The feeling in the Party is still divided. All are waiting
for something to happen.”- Every week-end after the Strasser crisis,
Hitler, Goering, Ley and Goebbels visited the different Gaiie to talk to
Party officials, and restore their confidence in the leadership. On 12
December, for instance, Goebbels reports that Hitler returned from a

^ Goebbels. pages 189, 209, 214. “ Ibid., page 209.

219

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

tour of Saxony where he spoke three times a day. The same evening
he spoke again in Breslau. On the 18th, after speaking in Hagen and
Munster, Goebbels joined Ley for a visit to the Ruhr. Together they
addressed eight thousand local olBcials, Amtswalter, at Essen and
another ten thousand at Diisseldorf. Despite Goebbels’ efforts at
whistling in the dark to keep his spirits up, at the end of 1932, two and
a half years after the first great election campaign, he wrote in his diary:

“This year has brought us eternal ill-luck The past was sad, and the

future looks dark and gloomy; all chances and hopes have quite dis-
appeared.”^

Suddenly, at the turn of the year. Hitler’s luck changed, and a chance
offered itself. The varied antagonisms which Schleicher had aroused
found a common broker in the unexpected figure of Franz von Papen,
and on 4 January Papen and Hitler met quietly in the house of the
Cologne banker, Kurt von Schroeder. The circumstances and purpose
of this meeting h; ve been much disputed: the account followed here is
in the mam that given by Schroeder himself in a statement made at
Nuremberg on 5 December, 1945.- The meeting was arranged through
Wilhelm Keppler, one of the Nazi “contact-men” with the world of
business and industry. The idea was broached to Schroeder by Papen
about 10 December, 1932. About the same time Keppler got in touch
with Schroeder with a similar proposal from Hiller. The beginning of
January was fixed upon, when Papen would be staying in the Saar, and
Hitler would be going to conduct an election campaign in Lippe-
Detmold. Considerable precautions were taken to keep the meeting
'secret. Hitler took a night train to Bonn, drove to Godesberg, changed
cars, and, giving the rest of his party a rendezvous outside Cologne,
disappeared in a closed car for an unknown destination.

Hitler took with him Hess, Himmler and Keppler, but the talk with
Papen, which lasted for two hours, was held in Schroeder’s study with
only the banker present besides the two principals First, misunder-
standings had to be removed: the sentence on the Potempa murderers
and Papen’s beliaviour on 13 August. Papen slipped out of the respon-
sibility for Hitler’s humiliation by putting all the blame on Schleicher
for Hindenburg’s refusal to consider Hitler as Chancellor. The change
of attitude on the President's part, he said, had come as a great surprise
to him. But what Papen had really come to talk about was the prospect
of replacing Schleicher’s Government: he suggested the establishment

' Goebbels page 215.

^ Text in Nazi Conspiracy and Aypession, vol. H, pages 922-4.

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

of a Nationalist and Nazi coalition m which he and Hiller would be
joint Chancellors. “Then Hitler made a long speech in which he said,
if he were made Chancellor, it would be necessary for him to be the head
of the Government, but that supporters of Papcn’s could go into his
Government as ministers, if they were willing to go along with him in
his policy of changing many things. The changes he outlined at this
time included elimination of the Social Democrats, Communists and
Jews from leading positions in Germany, and the restoration of order
in public life. Papen and Hitler reached agreement in principle so that
many of the points which had brought them in conflict could be
eliminated and they could find a way to get together.” After lunch
Schroeder’s guests stayed chatting together and left about 4 p.m.

Next day, to the embarrassment of both the participants, the meeting
was headline news in the Berlin papers, and awkward explanations had
to be given. Papen denied that the meeting was in any way diiccted
against Schleicher, and, at his trial in Nuremberg,^ he not only re-
pudiated Schroeder’s account as entirely false, but claimed that his main
purpose had been to persuade Hitler to enter the Schleicher Cabinet.
There seems no reason to suppose, however, that Schroeder gave an
inaccurate report; perhaps Papen’s memory played him a trick for once.

It is certainly wrong to suppose that the Hitler-Papen Government,
which was to replace Schleicher, was agreed upon at Cologne; much
hard bargaining lay ahead, and Schleicher’s position had still to be more
thoroughly undermined. But the first contact had been made; the two
men had found common ground in their dislike of Schleicher and their
desire to be revenged on him, each had sounded out the other’s willing-
ness for a deal. Hitler, moreover, received the valuable information that
Schleicher had not been given the power to dissolve the Reichstag by
the President, and — a point about which Schroeder is modestly silent —
arrangements were made to relieve the financial straits of the Nazi
Party. Schroeder was one of a group of industrialists and bankers who,
in November, 1932, sent a joint letter to Hindenbuig urging him to give
Hitler the powers to form a presidential cabinet.^ Among those who had
been active in collecting signatures was Dr. Schacht,^ and those who
signed included many of the leaders of West German industry. At that
time Papen had intervened to cut off financial supplies from the Nazis,
but now, with his blessing and Schroeder’s help, arrangements were
made to pay the Nazis’ debts. Hitler’s break with Gregor Strasser, the

^ Nuremberg Proceedings, part XVI, especially pages 329-35

“N.D. 3901-PS.

3 Cf. his letter to Hitler of 12 November, 1932, N.D EC-456, and also Dr.
Schacht’s testimony at the Nuremberg tnal, N.P., Part XIII, page 29.

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

acknowledged leader of the radical, anti-capitalist wing of the Party,
may well have helped to make the agreement more easy. A few days
later Goebbels noted: “The financial situation has improved all of a
sudden.”^ The political hopes of the Nazis rose at the same time. On
5 January, commenting on the news of the meeting, Goebbels remarked:
“The present Government knows that this is the end for them. If we are
successful, we cannot be far from power.”-

The Nazis could do little to help forward the intrigue against
Schleicher; that had to be left to von Papen, who was still by chance
living next door to the President in Berlin, and was a welcome and
frequent visitor in his house.- It was important, however, to remove the
impression of their declining strength. For this purpose Hitler decided to
concentrate all the Parly’s resources on winning the elections in the tiny
state of Lippe. The total vote at stake was only ninety thousand, but
Hitler and Goebbels made their headquarters at Baron von Oeyn-
hausen’s castle, Schloss Vinsebeck, and spent days haranguing meetings
in the villages and small towns of the district. At Schwalenberg Hitler
declared: “Power comes at last in Germany only to him who has an-
chored this power most deeply in the people.”^ On 15 January the Nazis
were rewarded by an electoral victory in which they secured 39-6 per
cent of the votes, a rise of 17 per cent. The Nazi Press brought out
banner headlines, claiming that the Party was on the march again.
“Signal Lippe” was the title of Goebbels’ own leader, and so loud was
the noise made by the Nazi propaganda band that, even against their
own belter judgment, the group round the President were impressed.

. TEe Nazis then proceeded to follow their success at Lippe by staging a
mass demonstration in front of the Communist headquarters in Berlin,
the Karl Liebknecht Haus. “We shall slake everything on one throw to
win back the stieets of Berlin,” Goebbels wrote. The Government, after
some hesitation, banned the Communists’ counter-demonstration, and
on 22 January, with a full escort of armed police, ten thousand S.A.
men paraded on the Bulowplatz and listened to a ranting speech by
Hitler. “The Billow Platz is ours,” Goebbels exulted. “The Communists
have suffered a great defeat. . . . This day is a proud and heroic victory
for the S.A. and the Party

By 20 January it was clear that Schleicher’s attempt to contruct a
broad front representing all but the extremist parties had failed. The
possibility of Gregor Strasser entering Schleicher’s Cabinet was revived

‘ Goebbels ; page 228 “ Ibid., page 221 , cf. also page 223.

’ Meissner’s Affidavit. This, too, was denied by von Papen at Nuremberg.

* Baynes: vol. I, page 194. ‘ Goebbels' page 231.

222

THE MONTHS OF UTPORTtlNiTY

at the beginning of January, when Stn.sser returned to Berlin; and on
4 January, the day Hitler was meeting Papen in Cologiie, Schieichei
arranged for Strasser to talk to Hmdenburg. As late as 14 January
Goebbels was speculating anxiously on Strasser’s entry into the Govern-
ment. By the 16th, however, Goebbels writes that the papers are dropping
Strasser and that he is finished; by the I9th Strasser was asking to see
Hitler, and was refused.

One after another all the German Party leaders turned down
Schleicher’s approaches. The Nationalists had been alienated by the
Chancellor’s schemes for land colonization and the threat of their
opponents in the Reichstag to investigate the gross scandals of the
Osthilfe (the subsidies which successive governments had made avail-
able to distressed landowners m the eastern provinces). They finally
broke with Schleicher on 21 January and turned to the Nazis. Hiller
had already seen Hugenburg, the Nationalist leader, on the I7th, and
the final stage of negotiations for a Nazi-Nationalist Coalition opened
on the evening of the 22nd m Ribbentrop’s house at Dahlem.

Up to the very evening before the announcement of Hitler’s Chan-
cellorship, Papen continued to balance two possible plans. Either he
could become Chancellor himself, with the support of Hugenberg and
the Nationalists, in a presidential cabinet and dissolve the Reichstag for
an indefinite period; or he could take the office of Vice-Chancellor in a
Hitler Ministry, which would aim at a parliamentary majority with the
help of the Nationalists and possibly of the Centre, dissolving the
Reichstag if necessary in order to v/in a majority at fresh elections. In
the second case, guarantees of various sorts would have to be obtained '
against the Nazis’ abuse of power, they would have to be tied down by
their partners in the coalition and the President’s dislike of having
Hitler as Chancellor would have to be overcome. Though he still
insisted on the Chancellorship for himself, Hitler was now prepared to
enter a coalition and to search for a parliamentary majority, but there
was room for a great deal of manoeuvring and bargaining on the com-
position of the Cabinet and the reservation of certain posts— the
Foreign Minister and the Minister President of Prussia, the Ministers
of Defence and Finance— for the President’s own nominees.

On the Nazi side the principal negotiator was Goermg, who was
hastily summoned back from Dresden on 22 January for a meeting that
evening, at which Papen, Meissner and the President’s son, Oskar von
Hindenburg, met Hitler, Goering and Frick. One important gain Hitler
made that night was to win over Oskar von Hindenburg, with whom he

223

PARTY LEADER, 1889-1933

had a private conversation of an hour. It is believed that Hitler secured
his support by a mixture of bribe* and blackmail, possibly threatening
to start proceedings to impeach the President and to disclose Oskar’s
part in the Oxthilfe scandals and tax evasion on the presidential estate
at Neudeck. It is not perhaps irrelevant to note that in August, 1933,
five thousand acres tax free were added to the Hindenburg estate, and
that a year later Oskar was promoted to the rank of major-general.
“In the taxi on the way back,” Meissner recorded, “Oskar von Hinden-
burg was extremely silent, and the only remark he made was that it
could not be helped — the Nazis had to be taken into the Government.”^

The negotiations continued for another week. On the 27th, a day on
which Hitler again saw Hugcnberg, who was making extravagant
claims for himself and his party, Gocbbels wrote in his diai 7 : “There is
still the possibility of von Papen’s being appointed again.” But the
climax of the crisis was at hand. On 28 January, Schleicher, recognizing
the impossibility of being able to deal with the Reichstag when it met on
the 31st, called on the President and requested the power to dissolve the
Reichstag. Ironically, Schleicher had reached the same position as Papen
at the beginning of December, when he had forced Papen out because
the latter wanted to fight Hitler, and had himself urged the need to form
a government which would have the support of the National Socialists.
The positions were exactly reversed, for it was now Papen who was able
to offer the President the alternative which Schleicher had advocated in
December, the formation of a government with a parliamentary
majority in which the Nazi leader would himself take a responsible
position. With the knowledge that this alternative had been prepared
*■ behind Schleicher’s back in the last few days, the President refused the
powers to override the constitution which the General requested, and left
him no option but to lesign. At noon on 28 January the President officially
entrusted Papen with negotiations to provide a new government.

It was still uncertain whether it would be possible to bring Hitler and
Hugenberg into the same coalition, and Papen had not yet put out of his
mind the possibility of a presidential chancellorship with the support of
Hugcnbeig and the Nationalists alone. Eager at any cost to prevent a
Papen Chancellorship, and still convinced that the only practical course
was to bring Hitler into the Government, Schleicher sent the Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army, General von Hammerstein, to see Hitler

^ Meissner’s Affidavit. For Oskar von Hindenburg's denials, cf. the record of his
trial befoic the De-Nazification Couit at Uelzen m March, 1949' Protokoll det
mundlichen V ethandluiig in dem Entnazifizierungsveifahien gcgeti den Cenemlleutmnt
a.d Oskar von Hindenbwg.

224

THE MONTHS OF OPPORTUNITY

at the Bechsteins’ house in Charlottenburg on the afternoon of 29
January, and to warn him that they mignt stil! both be Icfl out in the
cold by Papeii, In that case Schleicher put forward the suggestion of a
Hitler-Schieicher coalition to tule with the united suppoit of the Arm)
and the Nazis. Hitler, however, who was still hoping to hear tliat agree-
ment had been reached for a full coalition between Papen, Hugtnberg
and himself, returned a non-committai reply.

Much more alarming to Hitler was the possibility that the Army,
under the leadership of Schleicher and Huramerstcin, might intervene
at the last moment to prevent the formation of the proposed eouhtion
On the evening of the 29th a rumour spiead that Schleicher w'as pie-
paring a putsch with the suppoit of the Potsdam gai risen. Actoiuin.r
to Hitlei’s own later account, he feared that Schleicher might (.any off
the President to East Prussia, and proclaim martial luw.‘

How much truth there may have been m this it i i dililcult to say.- If
they ever seriously considered such a plan, .Schleicher and Hanmi'T--
stein took no steps to put it into efl'eet Rut Hitler could nut ailoid u»
take chances. On the night of 29 January he placed the Uerlm S.A.
under Helldorf in a state of alcil and arranged wU h a Nazi police maj.ir.
Wenke, to have six battalions of police ready to occupy the Wilheim-
strasse. Warning messages were sent to Papen and Hiiidenburg. Finally,
arrangements were made for Genera! von Bloraberg, who had been
recalled from Geneva to act as the new .Mmisicr of Ddcnee, to be taken
to the President the moment he reached Berlin the following morning

The keys to the attitude of the Array weie held by the Piesident, the
old Field-Marshal who was the embudmiciU of the mduaiy tradition,
and by General von Blomberg. Hindcnbuig had agreed to the formation*
of a Ministiy in which Hitler was to be Chancellor and had nominated
Bloraberg to serve as Minister of Defence under Hitler. If Blomberg
accepted the President’s commi.'Sion. Hitler could be virtually sure of
the Army. It would be interesting to know how far Blomberg had been
courted by the Nazis in advance. Both Blomberg and Colonel von
Reichenau, his Chief of Staff while he was in command in East Prussia,
had been in touch with Hitler,-* and Blomberg, who had recently been

^ Hitler's version of the hnal ncgotutions leading up to 30 Januai), given in the
course of a tram journey to Beilin on 21 May, 1942, is recorded in Hiilas Tmhge-
sprache (Bonn, 1951), pages 427-34

^For the detailed story of the so-called Potsdam putsch, see J. W. Whedei
Bennett* The Nemesis of Power,

^ A letter fiom Hitler to Colonel von Reichenau, dated 4 D*iccmbei, 1932, and
setting out his policy at length, is among the captuicd German documents. Blomberg
and Reichenau were brought into contact with Hitler by Muller, the Protestant
Chaplain to the Forces in East Prussia, who was an enthusiastic Nazi and later
became Reich Bishop.

L H. — E*

225

PARTY' 1.FADER, 18S9-1933

serving as chief military adviser to the German delegation at the Dis-
armament Conference, had been hurriedly recalled without Schleicher's
or Hammerstein’s knowledge. Fortunately for Hitler, Blomberg
accepted his new commission from the President, and the threat of a
last-minute repudiation by the Army was thereby avoided. In September,
1933, Hitler declared; “On this day we would particularly remember the
part played by our Array, for we all know well that if, m the days of our
revolution, the Array had not stood on our side, then we should not be
standing here today."^ For once he spoke no more than the truth.

It IS possible that fear of what Schleicher might do helped Pa pen and
Hugenberg to make up their minds and hastily compose their remaining
differences with the Nazis. At any rate, on the morning of Monday ihe
30th, after a sleepless night during which he sat up with Goering and
Goebbels to be ready for any eventuality, Hitler received the long-
awaited summons to the President. The deal which Schleicher had made
the object of his policy, and for which Strasser had worked, was ac-
complished at last, with Schleicher and Strasser left out.

During the morning a silent crowd filled the street between the
Kaiserhof and the Chancellery. At a window of the hotel Poehm kept
an anxious watch on the door from which Hitler must emerge. Shortly
after noon a roar went up from the crowd: the leader was coming. He
ran down the steps to his car and in a couple of minutes was back in the
Kaiserhof. As he entered tlie room his lieutenants crowded to greet him.
The improbable had happened: Adolf Hitler, the petty official’s son
from Austria, the down-and-out of the Home for Men, the Mekleganger
of the List Regiment, had become Chancellor of the German Reich.

226

* Hitler, on 23 September, 1933 Baynes: vol. I, page 556.

BOOK II

CHANCELLOR

1933-1939

CHAPTER FIVE

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

30 January, 1933 — August, 1934

Nazi propaganda latir built up a legend which repicsented
Hitler’s coming to power as the upsurge of a great national revival.
The truth is more prosaic. Despite the mass support he had won, Hiller
came to office in 1933 as the result, not of any irresistible revolutionary
or national movement sweeping him into power, nor even of a popular
victory at the polls, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the “Old
Gang” whom he had been attacking for months past. Hitler did not
seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue.

Far from being inevitable, Hitler’s success owed much to luck an^l
even more to the bad judgment of his political opponents and rivals.
While the curve of Communist success at the elections continued to
rise, the Nazis had suffered their sharpest set-back in Nos ember, 1932,
when they lost two million votes. .As Hitler freely admitted afterwards,
the Party’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb when the une.vpected
intervention of Papen offered them a chance they could scarcely have •
foreseen.

Before he came to power Hitler never succeeded iii winning more
than thirty-seven per cent of the votes in a free election. Had the
remaining sixty-three per cent of the German people been united in
their opposition he could never have hoped to become Chancellor by
legal means; he would have been forced to choose between taking the
risks of a seizure of power by force or the continued frustration of his
ambitions. He was saved from this awkward dilemma by two factors'
the divisions and ineffectiveness of those who opposed him, and the
willingness of the German Right to accept him as a partner in govern-
ment.

The inability of the German parties to combine in support of the
Repubhc had bedevilled German politics since 1930 when Bruening had

229

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

found it no longer possible to secure a stable majority in the Reichstag
or at the elections. The Communists openly announced that they would
prefer to see the Nazis in power rather than lift a finger to save the
Republic. Despite the violence of the clashes on the streets, the Com-
munist leaders followed a pohcy approved by Moscow which gave
priority to the elimination of the Social Democrats as the rival working-
class party.

Once the organization of the Social Democratic Party and the
Trade Unions had been destroyed and the Nazis were in power the
Communists believed that they would be within sight of establishing
the dictatorship of the proletariat. Sectarian bitterness and dogmatic
miscalculation continued to govern their actions even after Hitler
became Chancellor, and they rejected any suggestion of a common
front with the Social Democrats up to the dissolution of the Party by
the new Government. The Social Democrats themselves, though more
alive to the Nazi threat, had long since become a conservative trade-
union party without a single leader capable of organizing a successful
opposition to the Nazis. Though loyal to the Republic, since 1930 they
had been on the defensive, had been badly shaken by the Depression
and were hamstrung by the Communists’ attacks.

The Catholic Centre, like the Social Democrats, maintained its voting
strength to the end, but it was notoriously a Party which had never
taken a strong independent line, a Party whose first concern was to make
an accommodation with any government in power in order to secure
the protection of its particular interests. In 1932-1933 the Centre Party
was so far from recognizing the danger of a Nazi dictatorship that it
continued negotiations for a coalition with the Nazis and voted for the
Enabling -Law which conferred overriding powers on Hitler after he
had become Chancellor

In the 1930s there was no strong middle-class liberal Party in Germany
— the lack of such a Party has more than once been one of the disasters
of German political de\ elopment. The middle-class parties which might
have played such a role — the People's Party and the Democrats —
had suffered a more severe loss of votes to the Nazis than any other
German parties, and this is sufficient comment on the opposition they
w'ere likely to ofl'er

But the heaviest responsibility of all rests on the German Right, who
not only failed to combine with the other parties in defence of the
Republic but made Hitler their partner in a coalition government. The
old ruling class of Imperial Germany had never reconciled itself to the
loss of the war or to the ov'crthrow of the monarchy in 1918. They were

230

RlV(JLUTION <irTER POWER

remarkably well treated by the republican regime which followed.
Many of them were left in positions of power and influence; their wealth
and estates remained untouched by expropriation or nationalization;
the Army leaders were allowed to maintain their independent position;
the industi ialists and business men made big profits out of a weak and
complaisant government, while the help given to the Junkcis’ estates
was one of tlie financial scandals of the century. All this won neither
their gratitude nor their loyalty. Whatever may be said of individuals,
as a class they rem.ained irreconcilable, contemptuous of and hostile
to the regime they continued to exploit. The word “Nationalist,” which
was the pride of the biggest Party of the Right, became synonymous
with disloyalty to the republic.

Theie was certainly a period after tlindenbiiig was elected President
in 1925 when this attitude was modified, but it hardened again from 1929
iitiwarc., ,<iid both Papen and Hugenburg shaied it to the full. What
the German Right wanted was to regain its old position in Germany
as the ruling class; to Jw^troy the hated republic and redoie the
monaichy, to pui the woi king classes “in their places”; to isbuild the
military pcvcr of Germany; to reveise the decision uf 19 IK and to re-
store Germany— their Geimany — to a dominant position in Europe.
Blinded by interest and prejudice, the Right forsook the role of a true
conservatism, abandoned its own traditions and made the gross mis-
take of supposing that in Hitler they had found a man who would
enable them to achieve their ends. A large section of the German middle
class, powerfully attracted by Hitler’s nationalism, and many of the
Gen an Officer Corps followed their lead.

Thi ; was the policy put into effect by the formation of the coalition
bctw'ecn the Nazis and the Right at the end of January, 1933. The
assumption on which it was based w'as the bend that Hitler and the
Nazis, once they had been brought into the government, could be held
in check, and tamed. At first sight the terms to which Hitler had agreed
i.ppeared to confirm this belief.

He was not even a presidential chancellor; Hmdenburg had been
persuaded to accept “the Bohemian corporal,” on the grounds that
this time Hitler would be able to provide— what he had been unable to
provide in November, 1932 — a parliamentary majority. No sooner
was the Cabinet formed than Hitler started negotiations to bring the
Centre Party into the coalition For this purpose the Ministry of Justice
had been kept vacant, and when these negotiations did not lead to
agreement it was Hitler who insisted, against Hugenbeig’s opposition,

231

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

that new elections must be held in order to provide a parliamentary
basis for the coalition in the form of an electoral majority.

Papen might well feel scepticism about Hitler’s sincerity in looking
so assiduously for a parliamentary majority; but he still saw nothing
but cause for self-congratulation on his own astuteness. He had levelled
scores with General von Schleicher, yet at the same time realized
Schleicher’s dream, the harnessing of the Nazis to the support of the
State-— and this, not on Hiller’s, but on his own terms. For Hitler,
Papen assured his friends, w'as his prisoner, lied hand and foot by the
conditions he had accepted. True, Hitler had the Chancellorship, but
the real power, in Papen’s view, rested with the Vice-Chancellor, him-
self.

It was the Vice-Chancellor, not the Chancellor, who enjoyed the
special confidence of the President; it was the Vice-Chancellor who held
the key post of Minister — President of Prussia, with control of the Prus-
sian administration and police; and the Vice-Chancellor who had the
right, newly established, to be present on all occasions when the Chan-
cellor made his report to the President.

Only three of the eleven Cabinet posts were held by Nazis, and
apart from the Chancellorship both were second-rate positions. The
Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Defence — with control of the
Army — had been reserved foi men of the President’s own choice — ^the
first for Freiherr von Neurath, a career diplomat of conservative views,
the second lui General von Blomberg. The key economic ministries —
the Ministry of Economy, and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture,
both in the Reich and in Prussia — ^were in the hands of Hugenberg,
while the Ministry of Labour had been given to Seldte, the leader of
the Stahlhelni. This was highly reassuring to the industrialists and land-
owners. All that was left foi Hitler’s own Party was the Reich Ministry
of the Interior (which did not control the States’ police forces) for Frick,
and a Ministry without Portfolio for Goering. In addition Goering was
made Prussian Minister of the Interior, but, with Papen as head of the
Prussian Government, Goering too would be pinned down.

It was with tl’.ese arguments that Papen overcame Hindenburg’s
reluctance to make Hitler Chancellor. In this way they would obtain
that mass support which the “Cabinet of Barons” had so notoriously
lacked Hitler was to play his old role of “Drummer,” the barker for
a circus-show in which he was now to have a place as partner and his
name at the top of the bill, but in winch the real decisions would be taken
by those who outnumbered him by eight to three in the Cabinet This
was i.alpolitik as practised by Papen, a man who— as he prided himself

232

RLVft!l,l!ON Ai-IFR POWtR

— knew how to distinguish between the re day and the shows ot povscr.

Rarely has didliusionmcnt been so eoinp!. le or so w\i;i to Ibliow
Those who, like Papen, belie\ed they had seen through Hiller were lo
find they had badly underestimated both the leader and the mosenicn..
For Hitler’s originality lay in his realization that cficctive revolution,,
in modern conditions, are carried out with, and not against, the power
of the Stale: the correct order of events was first to secure access 1 '
that power and then begin his revolution. Hiller never abandoned ti
cloak of legality; he recognized the enormous psychological value ci
having the law on his side. Instead he turned the law inside out and mad.
illegality legal.

In the SIX months that followed the fonn ition of the coahtion govein-
ment, Hitler and his supporters were to demonstra'e a cynician and
lack of scruple — qualities on which his paitners particularly prided
themselves — which left Papen and Hugenburg g.S'-oing for breatln
At the end of those six months they were to dwco’cr, like the young
lady of Riga, the dangers of going for a ride on a ti icr.’ The first part
of this chapter is the history of how the Nazis took their partners tor
a ride.

At five o’clock on the afternoon of Monday, 30 inuary. Hitler pre-
sided over his first Cabinet meeting, tac minuks uf which arc among
the German documents captured after the war.- Tlie Cabinet was still
committed to seeking a parliamentary majority by securing the support
of the Centre Party, and Gocring duly reported on the progress of ins
talks with the leader of the Centic, Monsignor Ka is. If liiese failed,
then, Hiller suggested, it would be necessary to dissolve the Reichstag *
and hold new elections One at least of Hitler’s partners, Hugenberg,
saw the danger of letting Hitler conduct an election campaign with the
power of the Slate at hts command. On the other Iruid, it was Hugen-
berg who, more than anyone else, objected to the inclusion of the Centre
in the coalition. Hugenherg’s own solution was fi.inkly to dispense
with the Reichstag and set up an authoritarian regime. This, hovvev; ,
conflicted with the promise to Hindenburg that, if he agreed lo Hitler
as Chancellor, the new Ministry would relieve iiim of the heavy res
ponsibility of governing by the use of the Piesidcnt’s emergency powers
and would provide the constitutional support of a majority in the

' “There was a young lady of Riga,” it will be lecalled,

“Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.

They returned trora the ride
With the lady inside,

And a smile on the face of the tiger.”

-N.D., 351-PS.

L H -H’

233

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Reichstag. Reluctantly, Hugenberg allowed himself to be manoeuvred
into agreeing that, if the talks with the Centre Party broke down, the
Cabinet should dissolve the Reichstag and hold new elections. In return
he had Hitler’s solemn promise — reaffirmed at the Cabinet meeting of
30 January— that the composition of the coahtion government would
not be altered, whatever the results of the elections.

The next day, when Hitler saw Monsignor Kaas, he took good care
that the negotiations with the Centre should fail. When Kaas submitted
a list of questions and guarantees, on which the Centre would first
require satisfaction— a list simply intended to serve as a basis for
discussion — Hitler declared to his colleagues that his soundings had
shown there was no possibility of agreement and that the only course
was to dissolve at once. He gave the most convincing assurances of
loyalty to his partners, and, on the advice of Papen, Hindenburg agreed
once more to sign a decree dissolving the Reichstag “since the formation
of a working majority has proved impossible.” The Centre Party pro-
tested to the President that this was not true, that the questions they
had submitted to Hitler had only been intended as preliminaries to
further discussion and that the negotiations had been allowed to lapse
by the Chancellor himself But by then it was too late; the decree had
been signed, the date for the new elections fixed and the first and most
difficult of the obstacles to Hitler’s success removed. Papen and Hugen-
berg had allowed themselves to be gently guided into the trap. For the
last time the German nation was to go to the polls: this time, Goebbels
wrote confidently in his diary, there would be no mistake. “The struggle
is a light one now, since we are able to employ all the means of the
Stale Radio and Press are at our disposal. We shall acliieve a master-
piece of propaganda. Even money is not lacking this time.”^

In order to leave no doubts of the expectations they had, Goenng
summoned a number of Germany’s leading industrialists to his palace
on the evening of 20 February. Among those present were Krupp von
Bohkn; Voeglci of the United Steel Works; Schnitzler and Basch, of
I.G. Farben, Walter Funk — in all some twenty to twenty-five people,
with Dr. Schacht to act as host.- Haler spoke to them on much the same
fines as at Dilsseldorf a year before. “Now,” he told his audience, “we
stand before the last election. Whatever the outcome, there will be no
retreat. One way or another, if the election does not decide, the decision

* Goebells : page 240 — 3 February

“ AflSdavit of Georg von Schrutzler, 10 November, 1945, N.D. EC-439; Schacht’s
Interrogation, 20 July, 1945, N.D 3725-PS; Schacht’s testimony in Court, Nurem-
berg Proceedings, Part XII, pages 398-9, Funk’s Interrogation, June 26, 1945;
N.D. 2828-PS.

234

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

must be brought about by other means.” Goeiing, who foHowed, was
blunter. “Other circles not taking part in this political battle should
at least make the financial sacrifices so necessary at this time. . . . The
sacrifice asked for is easier to bear if it is realized that the elections will
certainly be the last for the next ten years, probably even for the next
hundred years.”^ After a short speech of thanks by Krupp von Bohlen.
at Schacht’s suggestion it was agreed to raise an election fund of three
million Reichsmarks from leading German firms. The fund was to be
divided between the partners in the coalition, but there was little doubt
that the Nazis would claim — and get—the lion’s share.

Throughout the election campaign Hitler refused to outline any
programme for his Government. At Munich he said: “It, today, we are
asked for the programme of this movement, then we can summarize
this in a few quite general sentences: programmes are of no avail, it is
the human purpose which is decisive. . . . Therefore the first point in
our programme is: Away with all illusions!”-
At Kassel he retorted on his opponents: “They have had no pro-
gramme. Now it is too late for their plans, the time for their ideas is
past. . . . The period of international phrases, of promises of intei-
national solidarity, is over and its place will be taken by the solidarity
of the German people. No one in the world will help us — only our-
selves.” ‘

The Nazi campaign was directed against the record of the fouiteen
years of Party government in Germany; above all, against the Social
Democratic and Centre Parties. “In fourteen years the System which
has now been overthrown has piled mistake upon mistake, illusion
upon illusion.”* What had the Nazis to put in its place? He was no
democratic pohtician. Hitler virtuously leplied, to trick the people
into voting for him by a few empty promises “I ask of you, German
people, that alter you have given the others fourteen years you should
give us four.”- “What I claim is fair and just: only four years for us
and then others shall form their judgment and pass sentence. I will
not flee abroad, I will not seek to escape sentence.”*'

Hitler did not rely on the spoken word alone. Although the other
parties were still allowed to function, their meetings were broken up,
their speakers assaulted and beaten, their posters torn down and their

* Report of Hitler’s and Goering’s speeches, N.D D-203.

* Hitler at Munich, 24 February, 1933; Baynes, vol. I, page 252.

“ At Kassel, 11 February, 1933; ibid., page 238
* At Stuttgart, 15 February, 1933; ibid , page 239.

*■ At Cologne, 19 February; ibid., page 250.

“ At Dortmund, 17 February, ibid., page 243.

235

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

papers continually suppressed. Even the ofiBcial figures admitted fifty-
one people killed during the election campaign and se,eral hundreds
injured. This time the Nazis were inside the gate, and they did not
mean to be robbed of power by any scruples about fair play or free
speech.

Papen believed he had tied Hitler down by restricting the number
of Cabinet posts held by the Nazis to a bare minimum, but while Hugen-
berg shut himself up with his economic plans and the Foreign Office
was kept in safe hands the real key to power in the State — control of
the Prussian police force and of the Prussian State Administration — lay
with Goering. By the curious system of dual government which existed
in Germany, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior carried out the work
of administering two-thirds of Germany, and was of much greater
importance than the Reich Ministry of the Interior, a head without a
body. In the critical period of 1933-1934, no man after Hitler played
so important a role in the Nazi revolution as Goering. His energy and
ruthlessness together with his control of Prussia, were indispensable to
Hitler’s success. The belief that Goering at the Prussian Ministry of
the Interior would be restrained by Papen as Minister President of Prus-
sia proved ill-founded. Goering showed no intention of being restrained
by anybody: he issued orders and enforced his will, as if he were already
in possession of absolute power.

The moment Goering entered office he began a drastic purge of the
Prussian State service, in which hundreds of officials were dismissed
and replaced by men who could be relied on by the Nazis. Goering paid
particular attention to the senior police officers, where he made a clean
sweep in favour of his own appointments, many of them active S.A.
or S S. leaders In the middle of February Goering issued an order to
the Prussian police to the effect that “the pohee have at all costs to
avoid anything suggestive of hostility to the S.A., S.S and Stahlhelm,
as these organizations contain the most important constructive national
elements. ... It is the business of the pohee to abet every form of
national propaganda.” After urging the police to show no mercy to the
activities of “organizations hostile to the State” — that is to say, the
Communists, and Marxists in general— Goering continued: “Pohee
officers who make use of fire-arms in the execution of their duties will,
without regard to the consequences of such use, benefit by my pro-
tection; those who, out of a misplaced regard for such consequences,
fail in their duty will be punished in accordance with the regulations.”
In other words, when in doubt shoot. To make his intentions quite
clear, Goering added: "Every official must bear in mind that failure to

236

REVOLUTION AF1!R POWER

act will be regarded more seriously than an error due to action."'

On 22 February Goering went a step fnither. Ho published an order
establishing an auxiliary puucc force on the giouiiu. that the resources
of the regular police were stretched to the hmu and must be reinforced.
Fifty thousand men were called up, among them tv. cat} -live ihr ixinJ
from the S.A. and fifteen thousand from the S.S. AH they had to do was
to put a white arm-band over their brown shirLs or blacl, shut, they
then represented the authority of the State it was the equivalent ol
handing over police powers to the razor and cush gangs. For the citizen
to appeal to the police for protection became more d.inueruus than to
suffer assault and robbery m silence. At best, the police turned their
backs and looked the other way, more often the auxiliaries helpc-i
their S.A. comrades to beat up their victims. This was “legality” iii
practice. In one of his dispatches the British 4mb.i5iaJor remarked
that the daily Press now' contained three regular lists;

“(1) A list of Government and police otlicials who have eitiicr
been suspended or sent away allogcdrer;

(2) a list of papers supprcsseU or suspended; and

(3) a list of persons who have lost their lives or been injured m
political disturbances.”"

The day after Hitler became Chancellor, Goebbels nu.ed m lir,
diary: “In a conference with the leader we arrange measures for com-
bating the Red terror. For the present we shall abstain from direct
action. First the Bolshevik attempt at a revolution must burst into flame.
At the given moment w’e shall stake ” Goebbels’ lequirement was to
be literally fulfilled. On 24 February the police raided Communist
H.Q in Bcihn at the Karl Lwhl necht Ilaiis. An Ofticiai communiqu • •
reported the discovery of plans for a Communist revolution. The pub-
lication of the captured documents was promised m the immediate
future. They never appeared, but the search for the counter-revolution
was intensified, and on the night of 27 February the Reichstag building
mysteriously went up in flames.

Although there are unsolved riddles in the history of that night —
notably how the Nazis got hold of the strange figure of the Dutch Com-
munist, van der Lubbe — the mam facts of the story are clear enough
Goering and Goebbels were looking for some pretext to smash the
Communist Parly. After rejecting various plans — such as an attack on
Hitler — they hit on the notion of setting fire to the Reichstag building.

^ Hciden: Histoty of National Socialism, page 216

- Sir H. Rumboid to Sir J Simon, 1 March, 1933, Brit, Doc,, 2nd senes, vol, fV,
No. 246. ® Goebbels: page 238—31 January.

237

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

An underground passage linked Goermg’s Palace of the President of
the Reichstag with the main building across the street. Through this
a small group of S.A. men under the command of Karl Ernst, the leader
of the Berlin S.A., entered the deserted building on the evening of the
27 th and scattered a chemical preparation with a delayed-action effect
over carpets, curtains and chairs. After doing this they made their way
back to safety by the underground tunnel. As they were leaving, a half^
crazed young Dutchman, who had been picked up by the S.A., after
attempting to set fire to other buildings, and carefully groomed for the
part of dupe, climbed into the Reichstag from the outside and proceeded
on his own account to start fires at a number of points. By the time the
police and the fire-brigades arrived the fire was out of control and rapidly
engulfed the whole budding.

Whatever the part played by van der Lubbe— and no one has so far
succeeded in explaining this satisfactorily — ^it was almost certainly that
of a supernumerary. The plans had been laid before he appeared on the
scene, and would have been carried out without him. But van der
Lubbe’s arrest m the act of incendiarism, his immediate confession of
guilt and the subsequent confirmation of his Communist associations,
added greatly to the plausibility of the offieial version that the fire was
part of a general plan of Communist terrorism. The Reichstag Fire
Trial in Leipzig v/as later to prove a major fiasco and an embarrassment
to the Nazi regime, especially to Goering. At its end four of the five
accused, the German Communist leader, Torgler; the Bulgarian Com-
munist, Dimitroff, and his two colleagues were all acquitted and re-
leased, only the unhappy van der Lubbe remained to be hurriedly
executed. But, long befoie that, the Reichstag Fire had fully served its
political purpose.

The day after the fiie, on 28 February, Hitler promulgated a decree
signed by the President “for the protection of the People and the
State.” The decree was described “as a defensive measure against
Communist acts of violence ” It began by suspending the guarantees of
individual liberty under the Weimar Constitution:

Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of
opinion, including freedom of the Press; on the rights of assembly and
association; violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic
communications; wai rants for house searches; orders for confiscation as
well as restrictions on property, are permissible beyond the legal limits
otherwise prescribed.

Article 2 authorized the Reich Government if necessary to take over
full powers in any federal State. Article 5 increased the penalty for the
233

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

crimes of high treason, poisoning, arson and sabotage to one of death,
and instituted the death penalty, or hard labour for life, in the case of
conspiracy to assassinate members of the Government, or grave
breaches of the peace.^

Armed with these all-embracing powers. Hitler and Goering were
m a position to take any action they pleased against their opponents.
They cleverly postponed the formal proscription of the Communist
Party until after the elections, so that the working-class vote should
continue to be divided between the rival parties of the Communists
and the Social Democrats. But acts of terrorism against the leadeis,
the Press and organizations of the Left-wing parties were now inten-
sified. When a British correspondent, Sefton Delmer of the Daily
Express, asked Hitler what truth there was in rumours of a projected
massacre of his political opponents, Hitler replied: “My dear Delmer,

I need no St. Bartholomew’s Night. By the decrees issued legally ve
have appointed tribunals which will try enemies of the Stale legally,
and deal with them legally in a way which will put an end to these con-
spiracies.’’-

Meanwhile, in the last week of the election campaign, the Nazi
propaganda machine redoubled the force of its attack on the “Marxists,”
producing the most hair-raising accounts of Communist preparations
for insurrection and a “blood-bath,” for which the Reichstag Fire and
the arrest of van der Lubbe were used to provide substantiation. Even
those who regarded the official version of the Fire with scepticism were
impressed and intimidated by the ruthlessness of the Nazi tactics.
Hitler stormed the country in a last hurricane campaign, declaring
his determination to stamp out Marxism and the parties of the Left •
without mercy. For the first time the radio carried his words into every
corner of the country.

To leave no doubt of what they meant, Goering assured an audience
at Frankfurt on 3 March:

“Fellow Germans, my measures will not be crippled by any judicial
thinking. My measures will not be crippled by any bureaucracy. Here
1 don’t have to worry about Justice, my mission is only to destroy and
exterminate, nothing more. This struggle will be a struggle against
chaos, and such a struggle I shall not conduct with the power of the
police. A bourgeois State might have done that. Certainly, I shall use
the power of the State and the police to the utmost, my dear Commun-
ists, so don’t draw any false conclusions; but the struggle to the death,

* N.D, IJSO-PS

‘ Hitlei’s inteiview with Sefton Delmer, Dai/i Eiprea, 3 Maieh, 1933.

239

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

in which my fist will grasp your necks, I shall lead with those down
there— the Brown Shirts.”^

The campaign reached its climax on Saturday, 4 March, the “Day
of the Awakening Nation,” when Hitler spoke in Koenigsberg, the
ancient coronation town and capital of the separated province of East
Prussia. Attacking the “November pohticians,” Hitler declared:

We have been asked xoday to define our programme. For the moment we
can only say one thing: You began with a he, and we want to make a fresh
bcginarag wiih the ti uth. . . . And the first thought contained m this truth
is this . a people must understand that its future lies only m its own strength,
m its capaedy, its industry, its courage. . . .

One must be able to say once again; German People, hold your heads
h gh and proudly once more! You are no longer enslaved and in bondage,
but you are free again and can justly say. We are ail proud that through
God’s powerful aid we have once more become true Germans.®

As Hiller finished speaking bonfires blazed out on the hill-tops, all
along the “threatened frontier” of the east. It was the culmination of a
month in which the tramping columns of S A. troops, the torchlight
parades, the monster demonstrations, cheering crowds, blaring loud-
speakers, and mob-oratory, the streets hung with swastika flags, the
open display of brutality and violence, with the police standing by in
silence — all had been used to build up the impression of an irresistible
force which would sweep away every obstacle in its path.

In face of all this it is a remarkable fact that still the German people
refused to give Hitler the majority he sought. With close on ninety per
' cent of the electorate voting, the Nazis increased their own share of votes
by five and a half millions, polling 17,277,200 out of a total of 39,343,300,
a percentage of 43-9. Despite the Nazi hammering, the Centre Party
increased their voles from 4,230,600 to 4,424,900; the Social Democrats
li^ld steady at 7,181,600, a drop of only 66,400; while even the Com-
munists lost little more than a million votes, still returning a figure of
4,848,100. With the help of hi'< Nationalist allies, who polled 3,136,800
votes (a meagre gam of 180,000), Hitler had a bare majoiity in the new
Reichstag, 288 plus 52 scats in a house of 647 deputies. Disappointing
though the results were, this was just enough, and it did not escape the
attention of the Nazi leaders that with the proscription of the Com-
munist deputies they would have a clear parliamentary majority them-
selves, without the need of the Nationalist votes. After the experience

‘ Goenng’s speech at Frankfurt-on-Mam, 3 March, 1933, N.D. 1856-PS.
-Hitler at Koenigsberg, 4 March, 1933; Baynes: vol. I, pages 116 and 409

240

REVOLijIiti'v PO'>Vr!>

of the past few wcel,s, the ch';pces of Papjii, Hii^-cnbuig and the
Nationalists acting as an effecti'vc hrahe on their partners in the coali-
tion appeared slight.

Hitler’s dictatorship rested on the con-iitutiunal foundation of a
single law. No National or Cc ; liluon”,,! A-, einbly Vv^s called and
the Weimar Constitution was nc-.er lo'.d.iiy a i rotated Fresh laws
were simply promulgated as thej ap.iT'.vd ncces^. >. What Hitici
aimed at was arbitrary pov,er. It look time to .:c! .cc this, but from
the first he had no mienta r of Ino irg fvu h. pj., t.^u l.> ^ con.,iimti(in ,
there was no cqiinaicnt of the Fu'-Cr.t Grand Coiniei! v.h ch in the end
was used to overthrow Mussolini. Long before me Second World War,
even the Cabinet had ceased to meet in Germany.

The fundamental law of the Hitler rF .me was the .so-called Enabling
Law, Geoctz zur Bt'hchum^ det hot ivi J'clk imd R“i'!i (Law for Re-
moving the Distress of People and Reich). As it represented an altera-
tion of the Constitution, a m.'nriJy {'F fv'o-thirds of the Reiclistag was
necessary to pass it, and Hitlei’s iiist jireoccupnlio afier the elections
was to secure this. One step was simple: the cighty-one Coinmimist
deputies could be left out of account, those who had no! been arrested
so far would certainly be a- rested 'f they nut in an appeaiaiiee in the
Reichstag. Negotiations with the Centre weie icsumed and, in the mean-
time, Hillei showed himself in his most conciliatory mood lowsirds his
Nationalist partnei^ Both the discussions in the Cabinetd and the*
negotiations with the Cemre,- revcuied the same uneasi'iess at the pros-
pect of the powers the Government was claiming But the Nazis held
the whip-hand with the deciec of 28 February. If necessary, they
threatened to make suflicicnt arrests to provide them with their majority
without bothering about the votes of the Centre. The Nationalists
comforted IhemseKcs with the clause lu the new law which declared
that the rights of the Pro idcnt icmained unaffected. The Centre, after
receiving lavish promises I'rom Hitler, succeeded also in getting a letter
from the President in which he wrote that “the Chaiiceliur has given
me his assurance that, even without being forcibly obliged by the Con-
stitution, he will not use the power conferred on him by the Enabling

^Thc Cabinet Minutes of 15 March and 20 March have been published. N D,
2962-3-PS

- Cf. the account by Dr Bruenmg in Em Bne}, pages 15-20

241

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Act without having first consulted me.”^ These were more paper-dykes
to hold out the flood-tide, but Hitler was prepared to promise anything
at this stage to get his bill through, with the appearances of legality
preserved intact.

Hitler’s master-stroke of conciliation towards the President, the Army
and tlie Nationalists was the ceremony in the Potsdam Garrison Church
on 21 March, to mark the opening of the Reichstag, two days befoie
it met to consider the Enabling Bill At the same time Hitler established
the claim of tiie new regime to be the heir of the military traditions of
old Piussia and its Hohenzollern kings.

Potsdam, the royal town of the Hohenzollerns, and the Garrison
Church, which had been founded by Frederick William I and con-
tained the giave of Frederick the Gieat, stood in deliberate contrast
to Weimar, the city of Goethe and Schiller, where the National Assembly
of the “November R.epublic” had met in 1919. The date, 21 March, was
that on which Bismarck had opened the first Reichstag of the German
Empire in 1871, and on which Hitler was now to open the first Reichstag
of the Third Reich. The guard of honour of the Army drawn up on
one side, and the S.A. on the other, were the symbols of the two Ger-
manics, the old and the new, united by the handshake of President
and Chancellor.

It was a brilliant spring day in Potsdam, and the houses were hung
with huge swastika banners, side by side with the black-white-red flags
of the old Empire. In the church itself one whole gallery was filled with
the marshals, generals and admirals of the Imperial regime, all wearing
4heir pre-war umfoims, and headed by Field-Marshal von Mackensen
in the uniform of the Death’s Head Hussars. The chair reserted for
the Kaiser was left empty, and immediately behind sat the former Crown
Prince, m full-dress uniform. On the floor of the church were ranged
the Nazi deputies, m brown shirts, flanked by the Nationalists and the
Centre; not a single Social Democrat was present

When the door was thrown open, the audience rose to its feet. The
members of the Government entered the church. All eyes were on two
men; the Austrian, Adolf Hitler, clad in formal morning-dress with a
cut-away coat, awkward but respectful, and beside him the massive
figure of the aged President, the Prussian Field-Marshal who had first
stood in this church in 1866 when, as a young lieutenant of the Guards,
he had returned from the Austro-Prussian War in which German unity
had been forged. Slowly the old man advanced down the aisle, leaning

‘ Quoted m full m J W. Whedci Bennett. Hindenbuig (London, 1936), page 448

242

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

on his cane. As he reached the centre, he turned and solemnly saluted
with his Field-Marshal’s baton the empty throne of the Kaiser and the
Crown Prince.

The President’s address, which he read, was brief. “May the old spirit
of this celebrated shrine,” he ended, “permeate the generation of today,
may it liberate us from selfishness and Party strife and bring us together
in national self-consciousness to bless a proud and free Germany,
united in herself.”

Hitler’s speech was framed with an eye to the representatives of the
old regime who sat before him:

The revolution of November, 1918, ended a conflict into which the German
nation had been diawn in the most sacred conviction that it was but
protecting its liberty and its right to live. Neithei the Kaisei , nor the Govei n-
ment nor the Nation wanted the war. It was only the collapse of our nation
which compelled a weakened race to take upon itself, against its most
sacred convictions, the guilt for this wai. ... By a unique upheaval, in the
last few weeks our national honour has been restored and. thanks to youi
understanding, Hen Gencral-Feldmarsclial, the umon between the symbols
of the old greatness and the new strength has been celebrated. We pay you
homage. A protective Providence places you over the new foiccs of out
Nation.^

With these words the Clwncellor crossed to the old Marshal's chair
and, bending low, grasped his hand: the apostolic succession had been
estabhshed.

Alone, the old man descended stiffly into the crypt to the tomb of
Frederick the Great. Outside, in the March sunshine, the guns roared
in salute and, to the crash of trumpets and drums, the German Army,^
followed by the S.A. and the Stahlholm, paraded before the President,
the Chancellor and the Crown Prince. As night fell a toichlighl pro-
cession of ten thousand S.S. troops swept through the Brandenburger
Tor to the cheers of a huge crowd, while at the Opera Furtwangler
conducted a brilliant performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersuiger.

As the French Ambassador later wrote: “After the dazzling pledge
made by Hitler at Potsdam, how could Hindenburg and his friends fail
to dismiss the apprehension with which they had begun to view the
excesses and abuses of his party? Could they now hesitate to grant him
their entire confidence, to concede the full powers he claimed?”'^

It was the other face of Nazism that was to be seen when the Reich-

^ Dokumente der deutschni Pohtd^, i (1935), pages 20-4.

“ A. Frangois-Poncet The Fateful Ycafs^ Memous of a French Auihamidor m
Bcihn (London, 1949 ), page 61.

243

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

stag assembled in the temporary quarters of the Kroll Opera House
two days later. The Enabling Bili which was laid before the House
contained five clauses. The first and fifth gave the Government the power
for four years to enact laws without the co-opcration of the ileichstag.
The second and fourth specifically stated that this power should include
the right to deviate from the ConstiLuhon and to conclude treaties with
foreign States, the only subject rc,erved being the institutions of the
Reichstag and Reichsrat. The third provided that laws to be enacted
by the Government should be drafted by the Chancellor, and should
come into effect on the day after publication.^

As the deputies pushed their way in they could see behind the tribune
occupied by the Cabinet and the President of the Reichstag, a huge
swastika banner filling the wall. Outside, they had had to pass through
a solid rank of blacL-shirted S.S. men encircling the building; inside,
the corridors and walls were lined with brown-shirted S.A. troops.

Hitler’s opening speech was restrained. He spoke of the disciplined
and bloodless fashion m which the revolution had been carried out,
and of the spirit of national unity which had replaced the party and
class divisions of the Republic.

The Government [he declared] wiH only make use of these powers m so far
as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures. Neither
the existence of the Reichstag nor that of the Reichsrat is menaced. The
position and rights of the Piesident remain unaffected. It will always be
the foremost task of the Government to act in harmony with his aims.
The separate existence of the federal States will not be done away with. The
rights of the Churches will not be diminished, and their lelationship to
Ihc State will not be modified. The number of cases m which an internal
necessity exists for having iccoursc to such a law is in itself a limited one.
All the more, however, the Govciniueat insist upon the passing of the law.
They prefer a clear decision.

The Government [h: concluded] offeis to the parties of the Reichstag the
opportunity for friendly co-cperation. But it is equally prepared to go ahead
in face of their lefusal and of the hostilities which will result from that
refusal. It is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag, to decide between war and
peace.^

After a recess it was the turn of the leader of the Social Democrats,
Otto Weis, to speak There was silence as he walked to the tribune,
but from outside came the baying of the Siormlroopers chanting:
“We want the Bill — or fire and murder.” It needed courage to stand
up before this packed assembly — most of the Communists and about
a dozen of the Social Democrat deputies had already been thrown into
Text in Baynes: vol. I, pages 420-1 “ Ibid., page 246

244

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

prison — and to tell Hitler and the Nazis to their faces that the Social
Democratic Party would vote against the Bill. Weis spoke with modera-
tion; to be defenceless, he added, was not to be without honour. But
the very suggestion of opposition had been enough to rouse Hiticr to
a fury; there was not a scrap of generosity in him for a defeated oppo-
nent. Brushing aside Papen’s attempt to restrain him, he mounted the
tribune a second time and gave the Reichstag, the Cabinet and the
Diplomatic Corps a taste of his real temper, savage, mod. ing and brutal.
“I do not want your votes,” he spat at the Social Democrats. “Germany
will be free, but not through you. Do not mistake us for bourgeois.
The star of Germany is in the ascendant, yours is about to disappear,
your death-knell has sounded.”

The rest of the speeches were an anti-climax. Monsignor Kaas, still
clinging to his belief in Hitler’s promises, rose to announce that the
Centre Party, which had once humbled Bismarck m the Kuliurkampf,
would vote for the Bill, a fitting close to the shabby policy of compromise
with the Nazis which the Centre had followed since the summer of
1932. Then came the vote, and excitement mounted. When Goering
declared the figures — for the Bill, 441 ; against, 94 — the Nazis leaped to
their feet and with arms outstretched in salute sang the Horst Wessel
song.

Outside in the square the huge crowd roared its approval. The Nazis
had every reason to be delighted: with the passage of the Enabling
Act, Hitler secured his independence, not only from the Reichstag
but also fiom the President. The earher Chancellors, Bruening, Papen
and Schleicher, had all been dependent on the President’s power to
issue emergency decrees under Article 48 of the Constitution: now*
Hitler had that right for himself, with full power to set aside the
Constitution. The street gangs had seized control of the resources of a
great modern State, the gutter had come to power

III

In March, 1933, however. Hitler was still not the dictator of Germany.
The process of G/eicfoc/ia/tog— “co-ordination”— by which the whole
of the organized life of the nation was to be brought under the single
control of the Nazi Party, had still to be carried out. To illustrate what
Gleichschaltimg meant in practice it will be best to take the three most
important examples: the Federal States, the Trade Unions, and the
political parties. Hitler and Frick had not waited for the passage of the

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Enabling Act to take steps to bring the governments of the States
firmly under their contiol. Hitler had no intention of allowing such a
conflict between Bavaria and the Reich as he had exploited in 1923
to develop again, and he knew that since 30 January there had been
renewed talk of restoiing the monarchy, and even of secession, in
Bavaria. On the evening of 9 March von Epp, with full authority from
Berlin, carried out a coup d'etat in Munich. The Held Government was
turned out, and Nazis appointed to all the principal posts. Hitler knew
all the moves in the Bavarian political game. When the Prime Minister,
Held, apphed to the local Army C.-m-C , General von Leeb, for help
against the Nazis, von Leeb telephoned to Berlin. He immediately
received orders from Colonel von Reichenau at the Defence Ministry
to avoid taking any part in internal pohtics and keep the Army off the
streets. The ghost of Lossow had been laid.

Similar action was taken in the other States. Frick intervened, by
virtue of the decree of 28 February, to appoint Reich Police Commissars
in Baden, Wiirttemberg and Saxony. In each case they were Nazis,
and in each case they used their powers to turn out the Government
and put in Nazi-controlled ministries. Prussia was already under the
control of Goering’s rough hand, and the State elections held there on
5 March produced much the same results as those for the Reichstag.
On 31 March Hitler and Frick issued a law dissolving the Diets of all
the other States and ordered them to be re-constituted without fresh
elections, “according to the number of votes which in the election to
the German Reichstag were given to the electoral lists within each federal
State. In this connection seats falling to the Communist Party will not
be given out.”^ A week later Hitler nominated Reich Governors
(Reichstatthalter) in every State, and gave them the power to appoint
and remove State Governments, to dissolve the Diets, to prepare and
publish State laws, and to appoint and dismiss State officials.- All
eighteen of the new Reich Governors were Nazis, usually the local
Gauleiters. In Prussia the new law afforded an opportunity to turn out
Papen, who had hitherto united the offices of Vice-Chancelloi and
Reich Commissioner for Prussia, with Goering as his subordinate.
Hitler now appointed himself Reichstatthalter for Prussia and promptly
delegated his powers to Goering as Prussian Minister-President. Papen
“asked to be relieved of his post,” and the office of Reich Commissioner
for Prussia, which had been instituted at the time of Papen’s coup d'etat
in July, 1932, was abolished.

1 Law of 31 March, 1933, Article 4, N D 2004-PS.

^ Law of 7 April, 1933, N.D 2005-PS.

246

REVOLUTION AFTER POWCR

On the first anniversary of Hitler’s accession to power, 30 January,
1934, a Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich rounded off this work
of subordinating the federal States to the authority of the centra!
Government. The State Diets were abolished; the sovereign powers of
the States transferred to the Reich; and the Reichstatthalter and State
Governments placed under the Reich Government.’ This was the
culmination of a year of Gleichschaltung, in which ail representative
self-government from the level of the States downwards through the
whole system of local government had been stamped out. Although
formally the individual States were not abolished, in fad the dual
system of government, divided between the Reich and the States, which
both the Bismarckian and the Weimar Constitutions had had to tolerate,
was swept away. In March, 1934, Hitler defined the position of the
Reichstatthalter in terms that left no doubt of his intentions. “They are
not,” he said, “the administrators of the separate States, they execute
the Will of the supreme leadership of the Reich ; their commission comes,
not from the States, but from the Reich. They do not represent the
States over against the Reich, but the Reich over against the States. . . .
National Socialism has as its historic task to create the new' Reich and
not to preserve the German States.”-
The process of Gleichschaltung did not stop willi the institutions of
government. If Hitler meant to destroy Marxism in Germany he had
obviously to break the independent power of the huge German trade-
union movement, the foundation on which the Social Democratic
Party rested. In March and April the S.A. broke into and looted the
ofifices of many local trade-union branches, but the trade-union leader-
ship still hoped that they might obtain recognition from the Govern- ’
ment: after all, no previous German Government had ever gone so far
as to touch the unions. They, too, were soon disillusioned. The Nazis
cleverly camouflaged their intentions by declaring May Day a national
holiday, and holding an immense workers’ rally in Berhn which was
addressed by Hitler. On the morning of the next day the trade-union
offices all over the country were occupied by S.A. and S.S. troopers.
Many union ofiicials were arrested, beaten and thrown into concen-
tration camps. All the unions were then merged into a new German
Labour Front. “Once the Trade Unions are m our hands,” Gocbbels
commented, “the other parties and organizations will not be able to

hold out long In a year’s time Germany will be entirely in our

hands.”®

' Law of 30 January, 1934, N.D. 2CI06-PS.

2 Speech of 22 March, 1934; Baynes, vol. I, pages 275-6.

® Goebbels: page 280.

247

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Hitler deliberately avoided placing the trade unions under the exist-
ing N.S.B.O. (National Socialist Factory Cell Organization), which was
tainted with Socialist ideas and Slrassensm. He gave control of the
Labour Front to Robert Ley, who had been an opponent of Gregor
Strasser’s as long ago as 1925, and had replaced him as head of the
Political Organization in December, 1932. In his initial proclama-
tion Ley declared: “Workers! Your institutions are sacred to us
National Socialists. I myself am a poor peasant’s son and understand
poverty, I myself was seven years in one of the biggest industries in
Germany and I know the exploitation of anonymous capitalism.
Workers ! I swear to you we will not only keep everything which exists,
we will build up the protection and rights of the worker even further.”^

Hitler gave similar assurances when he addressed the First Congress
of German Workers on 10 May. This speech^ is well worth comparison
with liis address to the Industry Club at Dusseldorf a year before, as
an example of Hitler’s skill in adapting himself to the audience he was
facing. But the intentions behind Hitler’s talk of honouring labour and
abolishing the class war were not long concealed. Before the month
was out a new law ended collcetive bargaining and appointed Labour
Trustees, under the Government’s orders, to settle conditions of work.®

Just as Leipart and Grassmann, the trade-union leaders, had hoped
to preserve their organization intact by doing everything possible to
avoid provoking the country’s new lulers, the Social Democrats too
attempted to carry on loyally for a time, even after the Enabhng Act
had been passed. Their efforts proved equally futile On 10 May Goering
' ordered the occupation of the Party’s buildings and newspaper offices,
and the confiscation of the Paity’s funds. Some of the Social Demo-
cratic leaders, like Otto Weis, moved to Prague and set up a centre of
opposition there; others, like Karl Severing, simply retired into the
obscurity of private life. As late as 19 June a new Party committee of
four was elected in Beilin, but thiee days later Frick put an end to their
uncertainty by buniung the Social Democratic Party as an enemy of
people and State. Social Democratic lopresentation on any elected or
other public body, like that of the Communists, was annulled.^ The
Communists, of course, had been virtually proscribed since the Reich-
stag Fire, although for tactical reasons they had been allowed to put
forward a list at the Reichstag election. None of their deputies, however,

' Proclanution of the Action Committee for the Protection of German Labour,
2 May, 1933 N D. 614-PS

“ A translation is to be found in Baynes: vol I, page= 839-6-^

= Law of 19 May, 1933, N.D. 405-PS. ‘ Law of 7 July, 1933, N D. 205S-FS

248

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

had ever been allowed to take his seat, and on 26 May Hitler and
Frick promulgated a law confiscating the entire assets and property
of the Party.

The remaining parties represented a more delicate problem, but this
did not long delay their disappearance. After the Bavarian People’s
Party, the ally of the Centre, had seen their offices occupied and then
leaders arrested on 22 June — on the picioxl of a conspiracy with the
Austrian Christian Sociahsts— the Party announced its own dissolution
on 4 July, and was followed by the Centre Party on 5 July. The fact that
a Catholic Party no longer existed in Gi rmany was accepted by the
Vatican in the Concordat which it condiuCd with Kitlcr’s Government
this same summer. The Democrats {StaaLpjilci) and the Peopie's
Party, which Stiesemann had once led, rediRcd lo rare Jai'.’.e.vs by
the success of the Nazis m capturing the niHidk-i lass vote, had a! -eady
immolated themselves.’- Not even HitleTs partners in the coalition,
the Nationalists, were spared Hugenberg's resistance in the Cabinet
and an angry appeal to the President proved ineffectual. On 21 Jiine
the police and S.A. occupied the Party’s offices in a number of German
towns, and a week later the leaders, bowing to the inevitable, dis-
solved the Party.

On 14 July the Official Gazette contained the brief announcement;

“The German Government has enacted the following law, which is
herewith promulgated:

Article I; The National Socialist German Workers’ Party constitutes
the only political Party in Germany.

Article II: Whoever undertakes to maintain the organizational
structure of another political Party or to form a new political Party will •
be punished with penal servitude up to tiiree years or with imprison-
ment up to three years, if the action is not subject to a greater penalty
according to other regulations.

The Reich Chanoillor,

Adolf Hitler.

The Reich Minister of the Interior,
Frick.

The Reich Minister of Justice,

Dr.

The Stahlhelm took a little longer to absorb. A first step was Hitler’s
success in persuading Seldte, the Stahlhehn leader and its representative
m the Cabinet, to dismiss his second-in-command, Duesterberg, audio

1 The Democrats announced their dissolution on 28 June, 1933 ; the People’s Party
on 4 July.

-ND 1388-A-PS

249

CHANCILIOR, 1933-1939

join the National Socialist Party himself A succession of uneasy com-
promises with the S.A., punctuated by fights between the rival private
armies, raids and arrests of Stcthlhelm leaders, led to the incorporation of
the StaMhelm in the S.A. by the end of 1933, and to its formal dissolution
in November, 1935.

The remnants of the old Fieikoips were ceremonially dissolved at
Munich on the tenth anniversary of the unsuccessful putsch of 9
November, 1923. The agitator who had then fled before the shots of the
Bavarian police, now the Chancellor of Germany, laid a wreath on the
tomb of the martyis of the movement with the inscnpuon. “Despite all,
you have conquered.” The roll-call of the Freikorps was called one by
one — the Freikorps of the Baltic, of Silesia and the Ruhr, the Ehrhardt
Brigade, OLeiland, Rossbacii, the Hitler Shock Troop and the rest As
each answered “Present,” their stained and tattered flags were borne
forward for the last time, and solemnly laid up in the iiali of the Brown
House under an S.A. guard of honour It was the closing of a strange
and sinister page m the post-war histoiy of Germany. Just as the
ceremony at Potsdam in March had marked the claim of the Nazis to be
the heirs of the old Prussia, so by the Munich ceremony in November
they made good their claim to embody the traditions of the Freikorps.

With the suppression of the parties, the basis of the coalition which
had brought Hitler into power disappeared. With the passage of the
Enabling Law the need for it had gone. Hitler had never been undei any
illusion about the intention of Pa pen and Hindenburg to tie him down;
but equally, he had never had any doubts of his own abihty to sweep
- away the restrictions with which they attempted to hedge him round.
“The reactionary forces,” Rauschning reports Hitler saying after the
Reichstag Fire, “believe they have me on the lead I know that they hope
1 will achieve my own ruin by mismanagement. But we shall not wait for
them to act. Our gieat opportunity lies in acting before they do. We
have no scruples, no bourgeois hesitations. . . . They regard me as an
uneducated barbarian. Yes, we are barbarians. We want to be baibar-
lans. It IS an honourable title

As so often later in his foreign policy. Hitler resorted to his favourite
tactic of surprise, of doing just the things no one believed he would dare
to do, with a bland contempt for convention or tradition. In a few weeks
he had banned the Communist and Social Democratic parties, dissolved
the Catholic Centre and the Right-wing Nationalises and taken over the
Stahlhelm and the Trade Unions, six of the most powerful organizations
^ Htanann Rauschning. Hitkr Specks, pages S6-7.

250

REVOLUTION AFTER FOWFR

in Germany — and, contrary to all expectations, nothing had happened.
Ihe strength of these organizations, even of a revolutionary party like
the Communists, was shown to be a sham. Hitler had scoffed at the
tradition of making concessions to Bavarian particularist fei,ling, and
with equal success had ridden rough-shod over the rights of the federal
States. The methods of gangsterism applied to politics, the crude and
uninhibited use of force in the first, not in the last, revolt, produced
startling results.

Any opposition in the Cabinet crumpled up before the wau' of
violence which was eliminating all the political landmarks in the German
scene. Papen, shorn of his power as Reich Commissioner in Prussia,
was a shrunken figure. Hitler no longer paid attention to the rule that
the Vice-Chancellor must always be present when he saw the President ;
indeed, he rarely bothered to see the President at all, now that he had
the power to issue decrees himself. Seldtc, the Stahihclm leader and
Minister of Labour, was soon persuaded to hand over his organization
to Hitler and surrender his independence. Hugenberg Iicld out till the
end of June, but lost his fight to preserve the Nationalist Party, and was
forced to resign on 29 June His place as Minister of Economy was
taken by Dr. Schmitt. As Minister of Food and Agriculture his suc-
cessor was Darrd, who had already foiced the once powerful Land League
into a union with his own Nazi Agrarpohtischen Appaiatwi, and turned
out its Junker president, Graf Kalckreuth, on a framed charge of cor-
ruption. Immediately after the elections, Goebbcls had been brought
into the Cabinet as head of a new Ministry of Public Eniiglitenment
and Propaganda.^ Three days later, after a short conversation with
Hitler, the President of the Reichsbank, Dr. Luther, suddenly resigned.
His place was taken by Dr. Schacht, a former Piesident who had written
to Hitler in August, 1932, “to assure you of my unchanging sympathy
—you can always count on me as your reliable assistant.”"

Thus by the summer of 1933 Hiller was compielc mastci of a Govern-
ment in which Papen only remained on sufferance, and which was
independent ahke of Reichstag, Piesidcnt and political allies. All
Papen’s calculations of January, his assurance that once the Nazi
Party was harnessed to the St.ite it would be tamed, had proved worth-
less. For Hitler had grasped a truth w! icli eluded Papm, tiic puliLical
dilettante, that the key to power no longer Lay in tlie parliamentary
and .presidential intrigues by means of which he had got his foot inside

^ Decree of 13 March, 1933. N D. lO^^PS.

« Schacht to Hitler, 29 August, 1932 N U. i2C457.

251

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

the door — and by means of which Papen still hoped to bind him— but,
outside, in the masses of the German people. Papen, deceived by
Hitler’s tactics of legality, had never grasped that the revolutionary
character of the Nazi movement would only be revealed after Hitler
had come to power, and was now astonished and intimidated by the
forces he had released.

For It is a mistake to suppose, as Papen did, that because Hitler
came to power by the backstairs there was no genuine revolutionary
force in the Nazi Party. The S.A. regarded Hitler’s Chancellorship
and the election victory of 5 March as the signal for that setthng of
accounts which they had been promised for so long. In the circum-
stances of Germany between 1930 and 1933, with the long-drawn-out
economic depression and the accompanying political uncertainty and
bitterness, the revolutionary impulse of the S.A was bound to strike
echoes in a large section of the German people. This wave of revolu-
tionary excitement which passed across Germany in 1933 took several
forms.

Its first and most obvious expression was violence. Violence had
been common enough in Germany for many months before 1933, but
the violence of the period between the Reichstag Fire and the end of
the year was on a different scale from anything that had happened
before. The Government itself dehberately employed violence and
intimidation as a method of governing, using such agencies as the
Gestapo (the Prussian Secret State Police established by Goering),
and the concentration camps opened at Oran'enburg, Dachau, and
other places. At the same time, the open contempt for justice and order
- shown by the State encouraged those impulses of cruelty, envy and
revenge which are normally suppressed or driven underground in
society. Men were arrested, beaten and murdered for no more sub-
stantial reason than to satisfy a private grudge, to secure a man’s job
or his apartment, and to gratify a taste for sadism In Berlin and other
big cities local S.A. gangs established “bunkers” in disused warehouses
or cellars, to which they carried off anyone to whom they took a dislike,
either to maltreat them or hold them to ransom. The normal sanctions
of the police and the courts were withdrawn, and common enme from
robbery to murder brazenly disguised as “politics.” The only measure
taken by the Government was to issue amnesties for “penal acts com-
mitted in the national revolution.”

This breakdown of law and order, of the ordinary security of every-
day life, not from any weakness or collapse of authority, but with the
connivance of the State, was a profound shock to the stability of a

252

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

society already shaken by the years of depression and mass unemploy-
ment. Yet violence, if it repelled, also attracted many, especially among
the younger generation. It was indeed a characteristic part of revolu-
tionary idealism. For 1933, like other revolutionary years, produced
great hopes, a sense of new possibihties, the end of frustration, the
beginning of action, a feeling of exhilaration and anticipation after
years of hopelessness. Hitler recognized this mood when he told the
German people to hold up their heads and rediscover their old pride
and self-confidence. Germany, united and strong, would end the
crippling divisions which had held her back, and recover the place
that was her due in the world. Many people believed this in 1933 and
thought that a new era had bepn. Hitler succeeded in releasing pent-
up energies in the nation, and in recreating a belief in the future of the
German people. It is wrong to lay stress only on the element of coercion,
and to ignore the degree to which Hitler commanded a genuine popular
support m Germany — so much less, as Mill once remarked, do the
majority of the people prefer liberty to power. The law introducing
the plebiscite’- is evidence of the confidence Hitler felt that he could
carry a majority of the German people with him, once he had come to
power and broken all organized resistance. To suppose that the huge
votes which he secured in these plebiscites were solely, or even prin-
cipally, due to the Gestapo and the concentration camps is to miss
what Hitler knew so well, the immense attraction to the masses of force
plus success.

Side by side with this— and yet another expression of the mood of
1933 in Germany— went the familiar and seamy accompaniment of all
revolutionary upheavals, the rush to clamber on the band wagon and
the scramble for jobs and advantages. The Germans invented a word,
the Marzgefallene, for those opportunists who first joined the Party
in March, 1933, and were eager to secure the favour of the new bosses.
The purge of the civil service, the closing of the professions to Jews,-
the creation of new posts in government and local government service,
in industry and business whetted the appetites of the unsuccessful, the
ambitious and the envious. Most of the men who now held power m
Germany, Hitler hims elf, Goering, Goebbels, and the thousands of

1 Uw of 14 July, 1933.

“ Laws purging the civil service were promulgated on 7 April, 30 June, 20 July,
1933, removing any official of Jewish descent and any who had ever shown Left-wing,
or even staunchly Repubhean, sympathies. Admission to the Bar was regulated
by a law of 7 April. All journalistic, musical, theatneal and radio work was brought
under the control of Goebbels by the estabhshmeiit of a Reich Chamber of Culture
(22 September), and the journaUstic profession was purged by a special law of 4
October.

253

chancellor, 1933-1939

Nazis who had become mayors of cities, Reichstag or Landtag deputies,
government officials, heads of departments, chairmen of committees
and directors on company boards, belonged to one or other of these
classes. The Altkdmpfer, the Old Fighters, and many who claimed
without justification to be Party members of long standing, now crowded
their ante-chambers, clamouring for jobs. Rauschning relates how one
man, who asked him for a job in Danzig, shouted at him: “I won’t
get down again. Perhaps you can wait. You’re not sitting on a bed of
glowing coals. No job, man, no job! I’ll stay on top no matter what
it costs me. We can’t get on top twice running.”^ The six million un-
employed in Germany, who had not disappeared overnight when
Hitler came to power, represented a revolutionary pressure that was
not easily to be dammed.

It was by harnessing these forces of discontent and revolt that Hitler
had created the Nazi movement, and as late as the middle of June,
1933, he was still prepared to tell a gathering of Nazi leaders in Berlin:
“The law of the National Socialist Revolution has not yet run its
course. Its dynamic force still dominates development in Germany
today, a development which presses forward irresistibly to a complete
remodelling of German life.” A new political leadership had to be
established; it was the job of the National Socialist movement to pro-
vide this new ruling class. “Just as a magnet draws from a composite
mass only the steel chips, so should a movement directed exclusively
towards political struggle draw to itself only those natures which are
called to political leadership. . . . The German Revolution will not
be complete until the whole German people has been fashioned anew,
until it has been organized anew and has been reconstructed.”^

Hitler used the same language to the S.A. At Kiel on 7 May he told
them: “You have been till now the Guard of the National Revolution;
you have carried this Revolution to victory; with your name it will
be associated for all time. You must be the guarantors of the victorious
completion of this Revolution, and it will be victoriously completed
only if through your school a new German people is educated.”-^

In the early summer of 1933 it seemed probable that this revolu-
tionary wave, with its curious compound of genuine radicahsm and
job-seeking, would not exhaust itself until every single institution in
Germany had been remodelled and brought under Nazi control
But there was a point beyond which this process could not go with-

' Hermann Rauschning Hitler Speaks, page 103
Speech of 14 June, to the Fuehrertagiiiig, Baynes' vol. I, pages 223 and 4S1-3,
Speech of 7 May, at Kiel, Baynes: vol. I, page iSl.

254

F' \ 0! f Tir>h At- ) f r. r 'j\v f--’

out i-eriously endangciing the efficiency of the State an*! nj the German
economy. Tin' was a Ihrcjt to which Hitler, w'ho was ikh\ the head
of the Government as well as the leader of a Party, could not remain
indifferent. The 'wo clan;'ers to which he had to pay p; riicidai I'tientiop
were the disruption of tlic ccon^'mic oip.i i/a lion of the (.oisntry, and
attempts to interfere with tl’e mvinffiliihiy of the Army.

Hitler'-, arrival in purser had Iteen accompanied hy a icci uilvscenc.
of Nazi rttacks upon tiic big capilaii-its. Otto Wagencr, llie he.td of
the Party’.s L-conuniic Section in the Brown House, atteuipted to '-etuf;
control of the cn'!pio 3 ers’ asrccialioiis which had combined to form
the Reich CciptinOion (id .It'icvd) of Gcruv n Inili'div. Dr. Adrian
von Rentein, the leader of the < '“ii ibal Lexmic ol Middle-Class 1 ladcs-
people, established himself as pieii b, "i of the Gen. .a t.idi' trial and
Trade CommiUee (the union of German Chanii'cis of Cnmnicrcc),
and declared that the Chambers of Commerce would be thr corner-
stone m the new Nazi cdiiicc of Reich Corpoialions. The iustilily of
the small shopkeepers, whom Ren'dii repre-enteu, was cspccully
directed against the department stores and co-operati\e' V/aithcr
Darrc, the new Minister of Agneuiture, demanded a drastic cut in
the cr.pilal value of agrarian debts and the reduction of the rate of
interest to two per cent Men like Gottfried Foder believed that the time
had come to put into piactice the economic clauses of the Party’s original
programme, with its sweeping proposals for nalionali/alion, profit-
sharing, the abolition of unearned incomes and “the abolition of the
thraldom of interest” (Points 13, 14 and II.)

Hitler had never been a Socialist; he was indifTcrent to economic
questions. 'What he saw, however, was that radical economic experi-
ments at such a time would throw the German economy into a stale of
confusion, and would prejudice, if not destroy, the chances of co-
operation with industry and business to end the Depression and bring
down the unemployment figures. Such an argument, an argument
which directly touched his own pov/cr, took prcced'ncc ovci the eco-
nomic panaceas peddled by Feder, or the imporluint': e'e sires of those
who believed, as Hitler told Rauschning, that Socialism meant their
chance to share in the spoils. Hitler made his changed attitude per-
fectly clear in the course of July.

To the Reu'hstatthdKcr, gathered in the Reich Chancellery on 6 July,
Hitler now said bluntly:

Tlie revolution is not a permanent state of affaiis, and it must not be
allowed to develop into such a state. The stream of revolution released must
be guided into the safe channel of evolution. ... We must therefore not

255

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

dismiss a business man if he is a good business man, even if ho is not yet a
National Socialist; and especially not if the National Socialist who is to
take his place knows noth.ng about business. In business, ability must
be the only authoritative standard. . . .

History will not judge us [Hitler continued] according to whether we have
removed and imprisoned the largest number of economists, but according
to whether we have succeeded in providing work. . . . The ideas of the
programme do not oblige us to act like fools and upset everything, but to
reahzB our trams of thought wisely and caicfully. In the long run our political
power will be all the more secure, the more we succeed m underpinnmg it
economically. The Reichstatthalter must therefore see to it that no organ-
izations or Party offices assume the functions of government, dismiss indi-
viduals and make appointments to offices, to do wh,ch the Reich Govern-
ment alone — and in regard to business the Reich Minister of Economics —
IS competent.^

A week later Hitler summoned the gauleiters to Berlin and made
the same point to them: “Political power we had to conquer rapidly and
with one blow; in the economic sphere other principles of development
must determine our action. Here progress must be made step by step
without any radical breaking up of existing conditions which would
endanger the foundations of our own hfe. . .

At the end of June when Hitler replaced Hugenberg as Minister of
Economy and Trade he chose as his successor Dr. Schnutt, director-
general of the largest insurance company m Germany, the Allianz.
Schmitt, like Schacht at the Reichsbank, was wholly opposed to the
plans of economic cranks like Feder, who was only made an Under-
secretary. Wagener was dismissed and his place taken by the “reliable”
Wilhelm Keppler, who now became the Fuehrer’s Deputy for Economic
Questions. Krupp von Bohlen remained as president of the Reich
Corporation of German Industry, and Thyssen became chairman of
the two powerful Rhineland groups, the Langnarmereitv and the
North-western Employers’ Association. The Combat League of Middle-
class Tradespeople was dissolved in August: on 7 July, Hess, the deputy
leader of the Party, had issued a statement forbidding members of
the Paity to take any action against department stores and similar
undertakings. Darre, it is true, remained as Minister of Agriculture,
but no more was heard of his demand to reduce the rate of interest on
rural debts to two per cent Finally, Schmitt let it be known that there

Hiller's speech to the Rtitlututtfialtei, 6 July, 1933, Baynes' vol. I, pages 865-6.
“ Hitlei’s speech to the Lauleiiers, 13 July, 1933, Baynes vol I, pages 484-5 and
867-8.

® Literally, The Long Name Union, a popular abbreviation of the Assoaation
for tire Preservation of Economic Interests m the Rhineland and Westphalia.

256

REVOLUTION ATTER POWER

would be no further experiments m the corporate development of the
national economy, and Hess banned such talk in the Pai ty on pain of
disciplinary measures.

July, 1933, in fact marked a turning point in the development of the
revolution. At the end of June, about the time that the crisis over
economic policy came to a head. Hitler had been summoned to Neudcck
to receive a remonstrance from the President on the turmoil caused by
the Nazi “German Christians” in the Protestant Churches. On his
return to Berlin he knocked the Church leaders’ heads together and
enforced a compromise for the sake of ecclesiastical peace. In a speech
which he delivered a few da>s later at Leipzig he spoke of the ending
of the second phase of the battle for Germany: “We could with a single
revolutionary onrush frame our attack to win power in the Slate; now
before us lies the next phase of our struggle. . . . The great lighting
movement of the German people enters on a new stage.”' The task
of this new phase Hitler described as “educating the millions who do
not yet in their hearts belong to us.”

Hitler’s own wish to bring the revolution to an end, for the time being
at least, and to consolidate its gains, is plain enough. To quote another
sentence of his speech to the Rekhtatthalm on 6 July: “Many more
revolutions have been successful at the outset than have, when once
successful, been arrested and brought to a standstill at the right
moment.”'^

Hitler, however, was far from convincing all his followers of the
necessity of his new policy. Once again opposition found its strongest
expression in the S.A. Its leader was Ernst Roehm, the S.A. Chief of *
Staff, who spoke in the name of the hundreds of thousands of embittered
Nazis who had been left out m (he cold, and wanted no end to the revolu-
tion until they too had been pros idcd for. At the beginning of August
Goering, in line with the change of policy, announced the dismissal of
the S.A. and S S. auxiliary police; they were no longer needed. On
6 August, before a parade of eighty thousand S.A. men on the Tempcl-
hof Field outside Berlin, Roehm gave his answer: “Anyone who thinks
that the tasks of the S.A. have been accomplished will have to get used
to the idea that we are here and intend to stay here, come what
may.”'

From the summer of 1933 to the summer of 1934 this quarrel over

‘ Hitler’s speech at Leipzig, 16 July, 1933; Baynes: \ol. I, page 63ii.

^ Ibid , vol. I, page 865

“ Quoted by Benoisl-M6chin; page 549, and by Koniad Heiden: Der Fuehrer,
page 564.

L H. — 1

257

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

the Second Revolution was to form the dominant issue in German
politics.

Throughout the autumn of 1933 and the spring of 1934 for the next
nine months demands to renew and extend the Revolution grew louder
and more menacing. Roehm, Goebbels and many of the S.A. leaders
made open attacks on Reaktion, that comprehensive word which covered
everyone the S A. disliked, from capitalists and Junkers, Conservative
politicians and stiff-necked generals, to the respectable bourgeois citizen
with a job and the civil service bureaucrats. The S.A. looked back
nostalgically to the spring of tlie previous year, when the gates to the
Promised Land had been flung open, and Germany had appeared to be
theirs to loot and lord it over as they pleased. Then an ofiicial job, a
Mercedes and an expenses account had appeared to be within the reach of
every S.A. sub-leader. Now, they grumbled, the Nazis had gone respect-
able, and many who had secured a Party card only the day before were
allowed to continue with their jobs while deserving Altkaempfer were
left out on the streets. In characteristically elegant language the S.A.
began to talk of clearing out the pig-sty, and driving a few of the greedy
swine away from the troughs.

While the S.A , which was a genuine mass movement with strong
radical and anti-capitalist leanings, became restive, and attracted to it
all those dissatisfied elements who sought to perpetuate the revolution,
Roehm and the S.A. leadership became involved in a quarrel with the
Army. It was the old issue which Roehm had fought over with Hitler
in the 1920s. On this subject Hitler’s views had never wavered: he was
as strongly opposed as ever to Rochm’s inveterate desire to turn the
S.A. into soldiers and to remodel the Army.

There were particularly strong reasons why Hitler wished to avoid
alienating the Army leaders at this time. The willingness of the Army
to sec Hitler become Chancellor, the benevolent neutrality of the Army
during the months following 30 January, in which he successfully
crushed all resistance and arrogated more and more power to himself—
these were decisive factors in the establishment of the Nazi regime,
just as the Army’s repudiation of Hitler in 1923 had been decisive for
his failure. The steps by which Hitler made sure of the Army’s friendly
attitude and the terms of the agreement which he made with the Army
are unfortunately not yet known to us. Two points, however, are tolerably
clear: first, that the key figure was General Werner von Blomberg,

258

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

who had been hastily summoned home from Geneva to take the post
of Minister of Defence in Hitler’s Cabinet; and second, that the terms
of the deal between Hitler and the Army included the promise to relieve
the Army from the anxiety of being forced to intervene in a civil war,
thus allowing it to preserve intact its traditions and its independent
position in the State.

The Army remained loyal to its bargain, and Hitler’s relations with
Blomberg became closer as he began to take the first steps in rebuilding
the military power of Germany. Hitler was dependent upon the generals
for the technical skill necessary to plan and carry out German re-
armament. Looking ahead to the time w'hen the aged President must
die, he recognized the importance of having the Army again on hr,
side, if he was to secure the succession to Hindenbnrg for himself. Foi
both reasons, Hitler was anxious that nothing should disturb the* con-
fidence of the Army leaders in the new regime.

Roehm took a different view. By the end of 193.^ the S.A. numbered
between two and three million men, and Roehm stood at the head
of an army more than ten or twenty times the size of the regular Reich-
swehr. The S.A. leaders, ambitious and hungry for power, saw in their
organization the revolutionary army which should provide the military
power of the New Germany. Most of the S.A. leaders had come through
the rough school of the Freikorps; they were contemptuous of the rigid
military hierarchy of the professional Army, and resentful at the way
they were treated by the Officer Corps. Like the gangsters they were,
they were envious and avid for the prestige, the power and the pickings
they would acquire by supplanting the generals. Their motives were ,
as crude as their manners, but undeniably men like Roehm and Hemes
weie tough, possessed ability and commanded powciful forces. To
Rauschning, Roehm grumbled: “The basis (of the new army) must be
revolutionary. You can’t inflate it afterwards. You only get the oppor-
tunity once to make something big that’ll help us to lift the world olf
its hinges. But Hitler puts me off with fair words. ... He wants to inherit
an army all ready and complete. He’s going to let the ‘experts’ file away
at it. When I hear that word, I’m ready to explode. Afterwards he’ll
make National Socialists of them, he says. But first he leaves them to
the Prussian generals. I don’t know where he’s going to get his revolu-
tionary spirit from. They’re the same old clods, and they’ll certainly
lose the next war.”^

In the long run Hitler was to treat the German generals just as roughly

* A conversation with Roehm at Kempinski’s m Bcilm, m 1933; Rauschning.
Hitler Speaks, pages 154-6.

259

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

as Roehm would have done, but in 1933-1934 he needed their support,
and was not prepared to let Roehm and the S.A. spoil his plans. On
their side, the generals were adamant in their refusal to accept the S.A.
on an equal footing with the Army, and determined to maintain the
Army’s privileged position in the State. Here was one institution which
they were resolved should not be Nazified, and Roehm’s pretensions
were rejected with contempt.

In a number of speeches m the latter half of 1933, Hitler went out
of his way to reassure the generals that he remained loyal to his com-
pact with them. On 1 July, addressing his S.A. leaders at Bad Reichen-
hall, he declared: “This army of the political soldiers of the German
Revolution has no wish to take the place of our Army or to enter into
competition with it.”

On 19 August at Bad Godesberg he repeated: “The relation of the
S.A. to the Army must be the same as that of the political leadership
to the Army.”^ On 23 September, after recognizing the debt the move-
ment owed to the Army at the time he became Chancellor he added-
“We can assure the Army that we shall never forget this, that we see in
them the bearers of the tradition of our glorious old Army, and that with
all our heart and all our powers we will support the spirit of this
Army.”^

But the problem of the S.A. remained. If it was not to be incorporated
into the Army, as Roehm wanted, what was to become of it? The S.A.
was the embarrassing legacy of the years of struggle. In it were collected
the “old fighters” who had been useful enough for street brawUng, but
for whom the Party had no further use when it came to power and took
over the State; the disillusioned radicals, resentful at Hitler’s com-
promise with existing institutions; the ambitious, who had failed to get
the jobs they wanted, and the unsuccessful, who had no jobs at all. As
the revolutionary impetus slackened and more normal conditions began
to return, the S.A., conscious of the unpopularity which their excesses
had won for them, began to feel themselves no longer wanted. In a
speech to fifteen thousand S.A. officials in the Berlin Sportpalast
in November, 1933, Roehm gave expression to this mood of frustration
in a violent attack on the “reactionaries,” the respectable civil servants,
the business men and the army officers, on whom Hitler now relied for
co-operation “One often hears voices from the bourgeois camp to the
effect that the S.A have lost any reason for existence,” he declared.

^ Both quotations from Baynes: vol. 1, page 554.

* Hitler’s speech on Stahlhelm Day, 23 September, 1933, Baynes: vol. I, page 556.

260

RE¥OLUTfON AFTER POWER

But lie would tell these gentlemen that the old biireauciatic spirit niu^t
still be changed 'in a gentle, or if need be, in an ungentle
Roehm's attack was gicetetl with loud applause.

Thus the particular issue of the relations between the S.A and the
Army became part of a much bigger problem. It became a test ease in-
volving the whole question of the so-called Second RevoIutii)ii™the
point at which the revolution was to be halted— and the classic problein
of all revolutionary leaders once they have come to power, the liquida-
tion of the Parly's disreputable past

Hitler first altcmpted to solve this problem by coiiciliaiion and com-
promise, a policy to which he dung in the face of growing ddficuiiies,
up to June, 1934. A Law to Secure the Unity of Parly and Stale, pro-
mulgated on 1 December, made both Rochm as Chief of Staff of thi‘
S.A., and Hess, the deputy leader of the Party, members ol the Reich
Cabinet. So far as Roehm was concerned, this repaired an omission
which had long been a grievance with the S.A.

At the beginning of the New Year Hitler addressed a letter to Roehm
of unusual friendliness, employing throughout the intimate form of
the second person singular:

My dear Chief of Staff,

The fight of the National Socuahst movement and the National Socialist
Revolution were rendered possible for me by die corr-^istent suppression of
the Red Tenor by the S.A, If the Arm> has to guarantee the protection of
the nation against the world beyond our front lers, the task of the S.A.

IS to secure the victory of the National Socialist Revolution and the existence
of the National Socialist State and the community of our people in the •
domestic sphere. When i summoned you to yoni piesent position, my dear
Chief of Staff, the S.A. was passing thiough a senoiis crisis. It is prmiaiily
due to your sei vices if after a few years this political instrument could
develop that foice W'hich enabled me to face the final stiuggie for power
and to succeed in laying low the Marxist opponent.

At the close of the year of the National Socialist Revolution, therefore,

1 feel compelled to thank you, my dear Ernst Roehm, for the imperishable
set vices which you have rendered to the National Socialist movement and
the Get man people, and to assuic you how Very grateful i am to Fate
that I am able to call such men as you my friends and fellow combatants.

In true friendship and grateful legard,

Yoiir Adolf Hitler.'^

^ Quoted by Heidcii: Der Fueba, page 573.

® Published m the Voikischa Beobachter on 2 January, 1934, and translated in
Baynes, voL I, page 289,

261

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

With Roehm and Hess in the Cabinet more attention was now paid to
the needs and grievances of the “old fighters,” and the end of the first
year of Hitler’s Chancellorship was signalized by a law passed in
February, 1934, “Concerning Provision for the Fighters of the National
Movement.” Members of the Party or S.A. who had suffered sickness
or injury in the pohtical struggle for the national movement were to
receive pensions or payments from the State in the same way as those
injured in the First World War.

Roehm, however, was not to be silenced by such sops. In February
he proposed in the Cabinet that the S.A. should be used as the basis
for the expansion of the Army, and that a single Minister should be
appointed to take charge of the Armed Forces of the State, together
with all para-military and veterans’ organizations. The obvious can-
didate for such a post was Roehm himself. This was to touch the Army
on its most tender spot. Hmdenburg had only agreed to Hitler’s Chan-
cellorship on the express condition that he, and not Hitler, should
appoint the Minister of Defence, and the Army would never agree to
a Nazi, least of all to Roehm, in such a position. The Army High Com-
mand piesented a unanimous opposition to such a proposal and
appealed to the President, as the guardian of the Army’s traditions,
to put a stop to Roehm’s attempted interference.

Hitler declined to take Roehm’s side in the dispute, and the plan
was allowed to drop for the moment. When Mr. Eden, then Lord Privy
Seal, visited Berlin on 21 February, Hitler was prepared privately to
offer a reduction of the S A. by two-thirds, and to permit a scheme of
supervision to see that the remainder neither possessed arms nor were
- given mihtary training. These proposals were renewed in April. Not
only were they a clever piece of diplomatic bargaining on Hitler’s part,
but they provide an illuminating sidelight on the direction in which
he was moving. For, although temporarily checked, Roehm kept up
his pressure on the Army, and relations between himself and General
yon Blomberg, the Minister of Defence, grew strained. Among the
captured German documents is a letter of Blomberg’s dated 2 March,
1934, m which he drew Hitler’s attention to the recruitment and arming
of special S A. Staff Guards. “This would amount to six to eight thou-
sand S.A. men permanently armed with rifles and machine-guns m the
area of the VI Military District H.Q. alone.”^ It is evident that each side
in the dispute was taking every opportunity to score off the other.

At the end of March, Hitler indignantly— almost too indignantly-
repudiated the suggestion of an Associated Press Correspondent that
^ N.D. D-951, with Roehm’s reply.

262

RFVOLUTION AUhR ROW IK

there were divisions in the Party leadership. A fbvv days later, however,
the situation was transformed for Hitler when he and von Blombcrg were
secretly informed that President Hindenburg could not be expected to
live very much longer. Within a matter of months, perhap' of week\
the question of the succession would have to be settled.

It had long been the hope of conservative circles that Hindenburg’s
death would be followed by a re%toration of the monarchy, and this
was the President’s own wbh, expressed in the Political Testament
which he signed secretly on 1 1 May, 1934. Although he had at one time
found it politic to talk in vague terms of an ultimate rertoralioti. Hitler
never seriously entertained the protect, and in his Reichstag speech ol
30 January, 1934, he declared the times to he inopportune for such a
pioposal. He was equally opposed to a perpetuation of the existing
situation. So long as the independent position of the President existed
alongside his own, so long as the President was Commander-in-Chief
of the Armed Forces and so long as the oath of allegiance was taken
to the President and not to himself. Hitler’s power was something less
than absolute. While the old Field-Marshal remained alive ihtler had
to accept this limitation, but he was determined that when Hindenburg
died he and no one else should succeed to the President’s position, li
was to Adolf Hitler, and not to a possible rival, that the Armed f‘orces
should take the new oath of allegiance. The first and most urspvirtant
step w'as to make sure of the Army, whose leiideis, in the tradilisin of
General von Seeckt, claimed to represent the permanent interests of
the nation independently of the rise and fall of governments and parties.
This was a claim which it was virtually certain Hitler would sooner or
later challenge; but he was content to bide his time and negotiate foi
the Army’s support on the generals’ own terms.

In the second w'eek of April an opportunity presented itself. On
11 April Hitler left Kiel on the cruiser Deutschland to take part in naval
manoeuvres, tie was accompanied by General von Blomberg, the Minis-
ter of Defence; Colonel General Freiherr von Fritsch, the Commander-
in-Chief of the German Army, and Admiral Raedcr, the Commander-
in-Chief of the German Navy. It is believed to have been during the
course of this short voyage that Hitler came to terms with the generals:
the succession for himself, in return for the suppression of Rochm’s
plans and the continued inviolability of the Army’s position as the sole

263

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

armed force in the State. On his return from East Prussia Hitler quietly
renewed his offer to the British and French Governments to reduce
the S.A. On the Army side, a conference of senior officers under Fritsch’s
chairmanship which met at Bad Nauheim on 16 May, to discuss the
question of the succession, endorsed Blomberg’s decision in favour of
Hitler after— but only after— the terms of the Deutschland Pact had
been communicated to them.

The news of Hitler’s offer to cut down the numbers of the S.A., which
leaked out and was published in Prague, sharpened the conflict between
Roehm and the Army. Roehm had powerful enemies inside the Party
as well as in the Army. Goenng, who had been made a general by
Hindenburg to his great delight at the end of August, 1933, once in
power gravitated naturally towards the side of privilege and authority,
and was on the worst of terms with the Chief of Staff of the S.A. He
began to collect a powerful police force “for special service,” which he
kept ready under his own hand at the Lichterfelde Cadet School near
Berlin. On 1 April, 1934, Himmler, already head of the Bavarian police
and Reichsfuehrer of the black-shirted S.S., was unexpectedly appointed
by Goering as head of the Prussian Gestapo. With the help of Reinhard
Heydrich, Himmler was engaged in building up a police empire within
the Nazi State, and it appears likely that Goering surrendered his
authority over the Gestapo with an ill grace. But Goering found in
Himmler an ally against a common enemy, for the first obstacle Himmler
sought to remove from his path was Ernst Roehm. Himmler and his
S.S. were still a part of the S.A. and subordinate to Roehm’s command,
although the rivalry between the S.A. and S.S. was bitter, and Roehm’s
relationship with Himmler could hardly have been less cordial. When
the time came the S.S. corps d’ehte provided the firing-squads for the
liquidation of the S.A. leaders, while Himmler — far more than the
generals — was the ultimate beneficiary of the humbling of the rival S.A.
Hess, Bormann and Major Buch (the chairman of the Uschla) were
meanwhile dihgent in collecting complaints and scandals— and there
were plenty — about Roehm and the other S.A. leaders.

Roehm’s only friends m the Party leadership were Goebbels and—
paradoxically enough— the man who had him murdered. Hitler.
Goebbels was by temperament a radical and more attracted by the
talk of a Second Revolution than by the idea of any compromise with
the Reaktion, which he continued to attack in his speeches and articles.
It was Goebbels who still kept in touch with Roehm and maintained
a link between the Chief of Staff and Hitler until the middle of June.

264

REVOLI-'TION ArrCR POWER

Only at the last moment did the Minister of Propaganda come over to
the other side and turn against Roehm, in the same way that he had
betrayed Strasser in 1926. As for Hitler, whatever view is taken of the
conflict which was going on in his mind it i.i clear that it was not until
the latter part of June that he was persuaded to move against Roehm
and the S.A , as Goering and Himmler had been urging him to do for
some time past.

Roehm’s strength lay m his S.A. troops, and his closest associates
were all prominent S.A. leaders. But Roehm himself and other S.A.
leaders, like the brutal and corrupt Heines, had acquired a bad reputa-
tion for the disorder, luxury and perversion of their way of living.
Although it suited Hitler and Roehm's enemies to play this up after his
murder,^ there is no doubt that it had seriously weakened Roehm's
position, even if there were few among the other Nazi leaders who were
well placed to cast reproaches. By tlic middle of May, Roehm so far
recognized that the S.A. were on the defensive as to send out an order
dated 16 May, instructing his local leaders to keep a record of all com-
plaints and attacks directed against the S.A.“

The history of the following weeks can only be reconstructed with
difficulty. The outlines of the situation are clear enough, but the parts
played by individuals, by Goebbels and by Strasser, for instance; the
intentions of the two principal actors, Hitler and Roehm; whether
there ever was a conspiracy, and if so who was involved in it— ail these
represent questions to which more than one answer can be given. The
official accounts fail to cover all the known facts and involve obvious
contradictions, while the accounts compiled from the evidence of men
who survived and from hearsay necessarily contain mucli that is un-
verifiablc, even where it iings true. Unfoitunately, the documentary
material captured in Germany at the end of the Second World War
and so far published has yielded virtually nothing; perhaps this was
one of the episodes in the history of the Third Reich of which no records
were allowed to remain.

The situation with which Hitler had to deal was produced by the
intersection of three problems, the problems of the Second Revolution,

^ In Hitler’s Older of the Day to the S A. after Roehm’s execution he made great
play with such charges as luxurious staff-hcadquarteis, costly banquets, expensive
limousines, the misuse of official funds, sexual perversion and moral corruption.
Cf. also his apologia before the Reichstag, 13 July, iy33, printed in Baynes: vol. 1,
pages 290-328.

“ Printed in Wembuch uher die Dschies>iini;eii dei 30 Jimi, 1934 (Carrefour, Pans,
1934), pages 57-8 This is a repot t pioduecd by Geiman iwi.yfdi, including a number
who escaped at the time of the purge

L H — 1*

265

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

of the S.A. and the Army, and of the succession to President von Hin-
denburg. Neither the first nor the second of these was new, and Hitler’s
instinct was to attempt to ride out the crisis and avoid making an out-
right decision in favour of either side. It was the third problem, that of
the succession, which introduced a note of urgency by making Hitler’s
own position vulnerable.

If Hitler was to secure their support for his succession to the Pre-
sidency, the Army and the conservative interests with which the Army
leadership was identified were determined to exact in return the removal
of the S.A. threat to take over the Army and renew the revolution. The
only alternative to accepting their terms was that urged by Roehm—
for Hitler himself to take the lead in renewing the revolution and,
relying on the S.A., to destroy any opposition by force. But this was a
course which would create more problems than it would remove. It
would mean the risk of open conflict with the Army, avoidance of which
had been a guiding principle with Hitler ever since the fiasco of 1923;
it would divide and weaken the nation, wreck the chances of economic
recovery and possibly produce international complications, even the
threat of foreign intervention.

For weeks these were the considerations which Hitler weighed in
his mind. Driven at last to decide, he chose to stand by his agreement
with the Army and repudiate the revolution, but for as long as possible
he sought to avoid a decision. When he had made it, he disguised it as
action foxced on him not by pressure from the Right, but by disloyalty
and conspiracy on the Left.

On 4 June Hitler sent for Roehm and had a conversation with him
which lasted for five hours. According to Hitler’s later account of this
talk, he warned Roehm against any attempt to start a Second Revolution
— “1 implored him for the last time to oppose this madness of his own
accord, to use his authority to stop a development which m any event
could only end in a catastrophe.’’^ At the same time as he assured Roehm
that he had no intention of dissolving the S.A., Hitler reproached him
with the scandal created by his own behaviour and that of his closest
associates in the S.A. leadership. What else was said is not known, but
it would be surprising if Hitler did not mention the succession to Hin-
denburg and the difficulties which Roehm was creating for him by
antagonizing the Army. It would be equally surprising if Roehm did
not attempt to win Hitler over to his view of the future of the S.A. as
the core of a new army. Whatever was said between the two men, a day

' HUlei’s speech to the Reichstag, 13 My, 1933; Baynes; vol. I, page 316.

266

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

or two later Hitler ordered the S.A. to go on leave fur the month of
July, returning to duty on 1 August, while Roehra announced on 7 June
that he himself was about to take a period of sick leave. During their
leave the S.A. were forbidden to wear their uniforms or to take part
in any demonstrations or exercises. This was evidently Hitler’s way of
relieving the tension and freeing himself temporarily of the embar-
rassment of his more impetuous followers. Lest there should be any mis-
understanding, however, Roehm issued his own communique to the S.A.
I expect, then, on 1 August that the S.A., fully rested and strengthened, will
stand ready to seive the honourable tasks which People and Fatherland may
expect from them. If the foes of the S.A. are nursing the hope that the
S.A. will not return from their leave, or that a part only will return, we arc
ready to let them enjoy this hope for a short time. At the hour and in the
form which appears to be necessary they will receive the fitting answer. The
S.A. is, and remains, Germany’s destiny.^

Roehm’s statement certainly suggests that Hitler had failed to per-
suade him to moderate his attitude, but Roehm left Berlin in the belief
that no decision would be taken in the netir future. Hitler indeed agreed
to attend a conference of S.A. leaders to discuss the futuie of the
movement at Wiessee, near Munich, on 30 June. It was a rendezvous
which Hitler did not fail to keep.

What then happened between 8 June and 30 June?

Hitler gave his version in his speech of 13 July. According to this,
Roehm through the agency of a certain Herr von A. (identified as
Werner von Alvensleben) had renewed his old relations with General
von Schleicher. The two men, according to Hiller, agreed on a con-
crete programme:

“1. The present regime in Germany could not be supported.

“2. Above all the Army and all national associations must be
united in a single band.

“3. The only man who could be considered for such a position was
the Chief of Staff, Roehm.

“4. Herr von Papen must be removed, and Schleicher himself
would be ready to take the position of Vice-Chancellor, and in
addition further important changes must be made in the Reich
Cabmet.”-

Since Roehm was not sure that Hitler would agree to such a pro-
gramme — and it appears that it was still proposed to retain Hitler as
Chancellor— he made preparations to carry out his plan by a coup, the
main role in which was to be played by the S.A. Staff Guards, to which,
^ Fiankfurter Zeitung, 10 June, 1934; translated by Baynes; vol. I, page 287.

* Ibid., page 311.

267

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

as we have already seen, Blomberg'had drawn Hitler’s attention. To
complete the conspiracy. Hitler continued, Schleicher and General
von Bredow got in touch with “a foreign Power” (later identified as
France). At the same time Gregor Strasser, who had retired into private
life after Hitler’s Chancellorship, was brought into the plot.

After his talk with Hitler on 4 June, Roehm — still according to
Hitler’s version— pressed on with plans to capture the Government
quarter in Berlin and take Hitler captive, hoping to use his authority to
call out the S.A. and paralyse the other forces in the State. The action
taken at the end of June was directed, Hitler claimed, to forestalling
Roehm’s putsch which was about to be staged in a matter of hours.

Part of this story can with some certainty be rejected as untrue from
the beginning If Roehm was preparing to make a putsch, his plans
were certainly not ready to be put into operation at the end of June
All the evidence shows that the S.A. leaders were taken completely
by surprise. On the very day he was supposed to be storming the Chan-
cellery in Berlin, Roehm was seized in bed at the hotel in Wiessee where
he was taking a cure and awaiting Hitler’s arrival for the conference
they had arranged. Most of the other S.A. leaders were either on their
way to Wiessee or had actually arrived. Karl Ernst, the S.A. leader in
Berlin (whom Hitler represented as one of the most important figures
in the plot), was taken prisoner at Bremen, where he was about to leave
by boat for a honeymoon in Madeira. The whole story of an imminent
coup d’etat was a lie, either invented later by Hitler as a pretext for his
own action, or possibly made use of at the time by Goering and Himmler
<- to deceive Hitler and force him to move against Roehm. Frick, the
Minister of the Interior, testified after the war that it was Himmler
who convinced Hitler that Roehm meant to start a putsch} Indeed,
the view that Hitler genuinely, although mistakenly, believed that he
had to deal with a conspiracy would fit very well with his own behaviour
at the time. So great was Hitler’s capacity for self-dramatization and
duplicity, however, and so convenient the pretext, that it would be
wiser, on the evidence we have, to keep an open mind.

By the time he came to make his Reichstag speech even Hitler seems
to have realized that there was precious little substance in his accusation
of intrigues with a foreign Power.® Whatever contacts Schleicher or

^ Frick’s Affidavit, 19 November, 1945. N.D. 2950-PS.

“ Cf. the lemark m his speech that the meetmg of Schleicher and Roehm with a
foreign diplomat under suspicious circumstances deserved pumshment with death
“even if it should prove that at a consultation which was thus kept secret from me
they talked of nothing save the weather, old coins and like topics.” Baynes: vol
I, pages 323-4.

268

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

Roehm had with the French Ambassador, or any other foreign represen-
tative, appear to have been entirely casual, and the German Foreign
Ministry later presented a note to the Quai d’Orsay in Paris officially
stating that any suspicions directed against the French Ambassador in
Berlin were wholly without foundation^

Stripped of its mysterious foreign complications and its melodramatic
denouement in an S. A . march on Berlin at the end of June, there remains
the double charge that Roehm discussed with Schleicher — possibly
also with Strasser— the programme outlined by Hitler, and that there
was talk in the S.A. leadership of forcing Hitler to take the lead m a
revolutionary settlement, which would include the establishment of
the S.A. as the nucleus of the new German Army. Neither charge is
implausible Roehm certainly had such ambitions for his S.A and made
no secret of them. He had been in close relations with Schleicher before
30 January, 1933 — so had Gregor Strasser, who was to have been
Schleicher’s Vice-Chancellor. Schleicher was an able, ambitious and
unscrupulous intriguer. At one time he had thought of incorporating
the S.A. as a reserve for the Army; and he had plenty of reason for
seeking to revenge himself on Papen, as well as on Biomberg and the
other generals who had accepted his dismissal in January, 1933, with-
out protest. But this remains speculation, and the one fact that is estab-
lished, namely, that Schleicher and Strasser were both shot in the same
purge as Roehm, is open to a very different interpretation. Foi, if there
were two men in Germany who might well have felt insecure in the
event of any purge, two men whom Hitler was certain to regard as
dangerous, whatever they did, they were Gregor Sltasser and Kurt
von Schleicher. There were many old scores levelled on the week-end '
of 30 June, 1934, and the murder of Schleicher and Strasser may well
fall into this category.

As to the second charge, it is very likely that Roehm and those who
shared his views discussed how to win Hitler over and force his hand,
but there is no proof at all that such discussions had gone so far as to
merit the name of a conspiracy The conspirators of June, 1934, were not
Roehm and the S A., but Goenng and Himmler, the enemies of Roehm;
the treachery and disloyalty were not on Roehm’s side, but on theirs
and Hitler’s; and if ever men died convinced — not without reason—
that they had been “framed,” it was the men who were shot on 30 June,
1934.

Without being dogmatic, therefore, there is good reason to regard
the account which Hitler gave of these events with suspicion, as the
’ Franfois-Poncet, pages 138-141.

269

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

awkward apologia of a murderer seeking to justify his crime by defaming
his victims.

Throughout June, 1934, there was an ominous tension in Berlin,
heightened by rumours and much speculation. At the end of May
both Bruening and Schleicher were warned that, in the event of a purge,
their lives were in danger. The possibility of such a purge was now
widely canvassed, although there were the most divergent accounts of
who was to make the purge and who was to be purged. Bruening took
the advice seriously and left for Switzerland; Schleicher went no farther
than the Starnbergersee, and returned in time to be shot.

On 14 June Hitler made his first foreign visit since becoming Chan-
cellor, and flew to Venice for the first of many celebrated conversations
with Mussolini. The first, as it happened, was among the least auspicious
of all. Mussolini, at the height of his reputation and resplendent with
uniform and dagger, patronized the worried Hitler, who appeared in
a raincoat and a soft hat. Mussolini was not only pressing on the subject
of Austria, where Nazi intrigues were to lead to trouble before the
summer was out, but frank in his comments on the internal situation
in Germany. He advised Hitler to put the Left wing of the Party under
restraint, and Hitler returned from Venice depressed and irritable.

No part is more difficult to trace in this confused story than that
played by Gregor Strasser — if indeed he played any part at all other
than that of victim. Hitler had apparently renewed touch with Strasser
' earlier in the year, and, according to Gregor’s brother Otto, saw him
the day before he left for Venice, in order to offer him the Ministry of
National Economy. Strasser, always a poor politician, made the mis-
take of imposing too many conditions, demanding the dismissal of
both Goenng and Goebbels. This was more than Hitler could agree
to, and he let Strasser go.

About the same time, again according to Otto Strasser, Goebbels
had been seeing Roehm secretly in a back room of the Bratwurst-
Gloeckle tavern^ in Munich. Immediately on Hitler’s return from
Venice Goebbels reported to him on his conversations with the S.A.
Chief of Staff

These attempts to keep touch with Strasser, the one-time leader of
the Left wing of the Party, and with Roehm, the leader of the S.A., in

' The victims of the Purge are reported to have included the landlord and head-
waiter of the Bratwurst-Gloeckle, who had seen too much.

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REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

which radicalism was endemic, were evidently related to a conflict
still going on in Hitler’s mind. What were the terms of this conflict?
Two explanations seem possible. The first is the explanation usually
given, that Hitler was weighing the advantages of going with the radicals
against the Reaktion, or with the Army and the Right against the radi-
cals. On this view he kept in touch with Roehm and allowed Goebbels to
go on with his talks, because he had still not made up his mind. The
second explanation is that given by Hitler himself. In his speech of 1 3
July he said: “I still cherished the secret hope that I might be able to
spare the movement and my S.A. the shame of such a disagreement
and that it might be possible to remove the mischief without severe
conflicts.”^

On this view Hitler was preoccupied not with the choice between the
radicals and the Retktion, between the S A. and the .■Vrmy, but with
the possibility of postponing such a choice and patching up a com-
promise, at least until the question of the succession had been decided.
On a priori grounds this seems a m.ore plausible explanation of Hitler’s
hesitation than that of vacillation between the reactionary and the revolu-
tionary course. For it is ditFicult to believe that Hitler ever contemplated
the risk of an open clash with the Army, whereas it is very easy to believe
that he was eager to avoid dealing a heavy blow to the Party, by de-
laying action in the hope that Hindenburg might die suddenly, or that
in some other way the crisis could be solved without irrevocable deci-
sions. At present there is not sufficient evidence to decide in favour of
one view or the other.

At this stage Hitler was given a sharp reminder of the realities of the
situation from an unexpected quarter. Papen had dropped into the
background since the spring of 1933, but he remained Vice-Chancellor
and still enjoyed the special confidence of the old President. The
divisions within the Party offered him a chance of re-asserting his
influence, and for the last time he made use of his credit with the Presi-
dent to stage a public protest against the recent course, and, even more,
against the prospective course, of events in Germany. If Hitler refused
to listen, or if his protest led to trouble, then Papen hoped and believed
that he would have the support of Hindenburg, who was equally un-
happy about the state of affairs in Germany. In case of need Papen
counted on the President’s ordering the Army to intervene.

Papen’s protest was drafted for him by Edgar Jung, with the co-
operation of a number of others who belonged to the Catholic Action
‘ Baynes: vol I, page 309.

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CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

group and hoped to use Papen as the mouthpiece of their ideas. Amongst
them were Papen’s secretaries, von Bose and von Detten, and Erich
Klausener, the leader of Catholic Action. The protest was made in the
course of a speech at the University of Marburg on 17 June and crys-
tallized the anxieties and uncertainties of the whole nation. It was
studded with references to Catholic and Conservative principles, but
its outstanding passages were those which dealt with the talk of a Second
Revolution and the shortcomings of Nazi propaganda.

“It goes without saying,” Papen declared, “that the supporters of
the revolutionary principle will first of all occupy the positions of power.
But when the revolution is completed, then the government can repre-
sent only the totality of the nation. . . . We cannot think of repeating
the division of the people, on the ancient Greek model, into Spartans
and Helots. . . . Selection indeed is necessary, but the principle of
natural selection must not be replaced by the criterion of adherence to
a special political doctrine.”

The Vice-Chancellor then turned specifically to the talk of a Second
Revolution.

Whoever toys irresponsibly with such ideas should not forget that a second
wave of revolution might be followed by a third, and that he who threatens
to employ the guillotine may be its first victim.

Nor IS it clear where such a second wave is to lead. There is much talk of
the coming socialization. Have we gone through the anti-Marxist revolution
in order to carry out a Marxist programme? . . . Would the German people
be the bettei for it, except perhaps those who scent booty in such a pillaging
raid? ... No people can afford to indulge in a permanent revolt ftom below
' if it would endure in history. At some time the movement must come to a

stop and a solid social structure arise Germany must not embark on an

adventure without a known destination, nobody knowing where it will end.
History has its own clock. It is not necessary continually to urge it on.

No less outspoken were the references to the mis-handimg of pro-
paganda:

Great men [Papen remarked] are not cicated by propaganda, but grow until
their deeds are acknowledged by history. Nor can Byzantinism cheat these
laws of Nature. Whoever speaks of Prussians should first of all think of
quiet, selfless service, and of reward and recognition only at the very last, oi
best, not at all.

In his concluding passage Papen returned to the place and purpose
of propaganda:

If one desires close contact and unity with the people, one must not under-
estimate their understanding. One must return their confidence and not
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REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

everlastingly keep them in leading strings. ... No organization, no propa-
ganda, however excellent, can alone maintain confidence in the long run.
It IS not by incitement, especially the incitement of youth, and not by threats
against the helpless part of the nation, but only by talking things over with
people that confidence and devotion can be maintained. ... It is time to
join together in fraternal friendship and respect for all our fellow country-
men, to avoid disturbing the labours of serious men and to silence fanatics.’-

The same day that Papen made his speech at Marburg, Hiller spoke
at Gera and was scathing in his references to “the pygmy who imagines
he can stop with a few phrases the gigantic renewal of a people’s lifc.”-
But Papen’s protest was not so easily brushed aside Goebbels took
immediate steps to ban its publication, seizing a pamphlet version and
the edition of the Frankfurter Zeitung in which the text had been piinted,
but copies were smuggled out of Germany and published abroad,
creating a sensation which did not fail to penetrate to Germany. When
Papen appeared in public at Hamburg on 24 J une he was loudly cheered.

It was evident that he had spoken for a great part of the nation.

On 20 June Papen went to see Hitler and demand the removal of the
ban on publishing his speech. In a stormy interview Papen threatened
his own and the resignation of the other conservative ministers in the
Cabinet — von Neurath, the Foreign Minister, and Schweiin von
Krosigk, the Minister of Finance. Goebbels continued to make speeches
attacking the upper classes and the Reaktion as the enemies of National
Socialism,’’ but Hitler saw quite clearly that he was face to face with a
major crisis and that action could not be deferred much longer. If he had
any doubts, they were removed by his reception when he flew to
Neudeck on 21 June to see the ailing President. He was met by the '
Minister of Defence, General von Blombcrg, with an uncompromising
message: either the Government must bring about a relaxation of the
state of tension or the President would declare martial law and hand
over power to the Army. Hitler was allowed to see the President only for
a few minutes, but the interview, brief though it was, sufficed to coniiim
von Blomberg’s message. The Army was claiming the fulfilment of its
bargain, and by now Hiller must have realized that more was at stake
than the succession to the Presidency: the future of the whole regime
was involved.

It is impossible to penetrate Hitler’s state of mind in the last week of
June. Obviously he must have been aware of the preparations which

1 1 have used with slight modifications the English translation punted by Oswald
Dutch in his life of von Papen, The Etrant Diplomat (London, 1941), pages 191-209.

“ Baynes: vol. I, 231-2. • E g., at Essen on 24 June.

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CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

were now rapidly put in hand and have agreed to them at least tacitly,
yet to the very last day he seems to have hesitated to take the final step.
At this stage it was not Hitler, but Goering and Himmler, who gave the
orders and prepared to eliminate their rivals in the Party leadership. In
the background the Army made its own arrangements. On 25 June the
Commander-in-Chief, General von Fritsch, placed the Army in a state
of alert, ordering all leave to be cancelled and the troops to be confined
to barracks. On 28 June the German Officers’ League expelled Roehm,
and on 29 June the Volkischer Beohachter carried a signed article by
General von Blomberg, the Minister of Defence, which was a plain
statement of the Army’s position.

“The Army’s role,” Blomberg wrote, “is clearly determined; it must
serve the National Socialist State, which it affirms with the deepest
conviction. Equally it must support those leaders who have given it
back its noblest right to be not only the bearer of arms, but also the
bearer, recognized by State and people, of their unlimited confidence.
... In the closest harmony with the entire nation . . . the Army stands,
loyal and disciplined, behind the rulers of the State, behind the Presi-
dent, Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, its Supreme Commander, and
behind the leader of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, who came from its ranks
and remains one of ours.”^

The Army leaders were quite content to leave it to Goering and
Himmler to carry out the purge, but after Blomberg’s article there
could be no doubt that whatever was done would be done with their
blessing.

, On Thursday, 28 June, Hitler, who had only just returned from
Bavaria, left Berlin for Essen to attend the marriage of the local Gaul-
eiter, Terboven. It is possible, as some accounts report, that he also
went to see Krupp and Thyssen; even so, his absence from the capital
at so critical a time is curious and suggests that he was either deliberately
trying to lull the suspicions of the watchful, or else refusing to take part
in preparations to which he was only half reconciled. While he was
away, on the 28lh, Goering and Himmler ordered their police com-
mandos and S.S. to hold themselves in readiness.

Far away from the tension and rumours of Berlin, on the shores of the
Tegernsee, Roehm continued to enjoy his sick leave with his usual circle
of young men, and to prepare lazily for the S.A. conference at the week-
end, at which Hitler was expected. So httle was he aware of what was
being planned that he had left his Staff Guards in Munich. His careless-
ness and confidence are astonishing. Yet, even in Berhn, the local S.A.

* Weissbuch, page 70.

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REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

leader, Karl Ernst, who was uneasily aware of something in the wind
and alerted the Berlin S.A. on the afternoon of 29 June, was so far misled
as to believe the danger was a putsch by the Right directed against
Hitler. Ernst never understood what had happened, even after his arrest,
and died shouting: “Hei/, Hitler.”

On the 29th Hitler, still keeping away from Berlin, made a tour of
labour camps in Westphalia, and in the afternoon stopped at Godesberg
on the Rhine, where in 1938 he was to receive Neville Chamberlain.
At Godesberg he brought himself to take the final decision. Goebbels,
who in the past few days had hurriedly dropped his radical sympathies
and his contacts with Roehm, brought the news that the Berlin S.A.,
although due to go on leave the next day, had been suddenly ordered to
report to their posts. Other alarming news of S.A. restlessness is said to
have come from Munich. Whether Hitler really believed that this was the
prelude to an S.A. mutiny, as he later claimed, it is impossible to say.
He may have been influenced by the news that Dr. Sauerbruch, an
eminent German specialist, had been suddenly summoned to the bed-
side of President Hindenburg. During the evening of the 29lh, Viktor
Lutze, one of the reliable S.A. leaders (he was later appointed to succeed
Roehm as Chief of Staff), was brought hurriedly from Hanover to
Godesberg to join Hitler, Goebbels and Otto Dietrich. At two o’clock
in the morning Hitler took off from the Hangelar airfield, near Bonn, to
fly to Munich. Before leaving he had telegraphed to Roehm to expect
him at Wicssee the next day. “It was at last clear to me that only one man
could oppose and must oppose the Chief of Staff.’’^

The purge had already begun in Munich when Hitler landed at the^
Oberwiesenfeld airfield at four o’clock on the Saturday morning. On the
evening of the 29th Major Buch, the chairman of the Uschla, and the
Bavarian Minister of the Interior, Adolf Wagner, formed a group of men
including Christian Weber, Emil Maurice and Joseph Berchthold, dim
figures from Hitler’s old days in Munich, and arrested the local S.A.
leaders on the pretext that they were about to carry out a coup d'etat.
At the Ministry of the Interior, where the S.A. Obergruppenfuchrer,
Schneidhuber, and his deputy were held under guard, a Hitler who had
now worked himself up into a fury tore off their insignia with his own
hand and cursed them for their treachery.

In the early morning of the 30th a fast-moving column of cars tore
down the road from Munich to Wiessee, where Roehm and Heines were
still asleep in their beds at the Hanselbauer Hotel. The accounts of what
‘ Speech of 13 July; Baynes; vol I, page 321.

275

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

happened at Wiessee are contradictory. Heines, the S.A. Obergruppm-
fuehrer for Silesia, who was found sleeping with one of Roehm’s young
men, is said to have been dragged out and shot on the road. Other
accounts say he was taken to Munich with Roehm and shot there.

Back in Munich, seven to eight hundred men of Sepp Dietrich’s S.S.
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler had been brought in from their barracks—
the Army providing the transport — and ordered to provide a shooting
squad at the Stadelheim Prison. It was there that Roehm had been im-
prisoned on 9 November, 1923, after the unsuccessful Munich putsch;
it was there that he was now shot by order of the man who seven months
before had written to thank him for his imperishable services.

In Berlin the executions, directed by Goering and Himmler, began on
the night of 29-30 June and continued throughout the Saturday and
Sunday. The chief place of execution was the Lichterfelde Cadet School,
and once again the principal victims were the leaders of the S.A. But in
Berlin the net was cast more widely. When the bell rang at General von
Schleicher’s villa and the general went to the door, he was shot down
where he stood and his wife with him. His friend, General von Bredow,
was shot on his doorstep the same evening. Gregor Strasser, arrested at
noon on the Saturday, was executed in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse Prison.
Goering would certainly have removed Papen too, if he had not been
Vice-Chancellor and under the special protection of the President.
Despite this, Papen’s office was wrecked, he himself was kept under
house arrest for four days, two of his advisers, Bose and Edgar Jung,
were shot, and two others arrested.

Late on the Saturday, Hitler returned from Munich. Among those
, who waited at the Tempelhof was H. B. Gisevms, who has described the
scene. Goering, Himmler, Fuck and a group of police officers stood
watching for the plane. As it dived out of the sky and rolled across the
field a guard of honour presented arms. The first to step out was Hitler.
“A brown shirt, black bow-tie, dark-brown leather jacket, high black
army boots. He wore no hat ; his face was pale, unshaven, sleepless, at
once gaunt and puffed. Under the forelock pasted against his forehead
his eyes stared dully.” Without saying a word. Hitler shook hands with
the group on the airfield; the silence was broken only by the repeated
click of heels. He walked slowly past the guard of honour, and not until
he had started to walk towards his car did he begin to talk to Goering
and Himmler. “From one of liis pockets Himmler took a long, tattered
list. Hitler read it through, while Goering and Himmler whispered in-
cessantly into his ear. We could see Hitler’s finger moving slowly down
the sheet of paper. Now and then it paused for a moment at one of the
276

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

names. At such times the two conspirators whispered even more
excitedly. Suddenly Hitler tossed his head. There was so much violent
emotion, so much anger in the gesture, that everyone noticed it Un-

doubtedly, we thought, they were now informing him of Strasser’s
‘suicide’. . . . The bathos of the scene, the woebegone expressions, the
combination of violent fantasy and grim reality, the gratuitously blood-
red sky, like a scene out of Wagner — it was really too much for me.”^
The executions went on all day Sunday — while Hitler gave a tea-party
m the Chancellery garden— and were not confined to Berlin. A consider-
able number of people, as many as fifty-four according to the White
Book later published in Paris, were shot at Breslau, and another thirty-
two in the whole of the rest of Silesia. Only on Monday morning did
the shooting cease, when the German people, shaken and shocked,
returned to work, and Hindenburg addressed his thanks to the Chan-
cellor for his “determined action and gallant personal intervention,
which have nipped treason in the bud.” On Tuesday General von Blom-
berg conveyed the congratulations of the Cabinet to the Chancellor.
The General had already expressed the devotion and fidelity of the
Army in an Order of the Day: “The Fuehrer asks us to establish cordial
relations with the new S.A. This we shall joyfully endeavour to do in the
belief that we serve a common ideal.”- The Army was very well
satisfied with the events of the week-end.

Vll

How many were killed has never been settled. According to Gisevius,
Goering ordered all the documents relating to the purge to be burned.
Little by little, a list of names was pieced together. Hitler in his speech
to the Reichstag admitted fifty-eight executed and another nineteen
who had lost their fives. In addition, he mentioned a number of acts
of violence unconnected with the plot, which were to be brought before
the ordinary courts. The White Book published in Paris gave a total
of four hundred and one, and listed one hundred and sixteen of them
by name

The largest group of victims belonged to the S.A., and included,
besides Roehm, three S.A. Obergnippenfuehrer—Hoints, von Krausser,
and Schneidhuber; Karl Ernst, the S.A. Gmppenfuehrer for Berlin, and
three of the men who had been his accomplices in the burning of the

^ H. B Gisevius • To the Bitter End (London, 1948), pages 167-9.

* Quoted by Bdnoist-Mdchin, up. Lit., vol. II, page 578.

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CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Reichstag; Hans Hayn and Peter von Heydebreck, the Gruppenfuehrer
for Saxony and Pomerania. Another group was formed by Schleicher
and his wife; his former assistant in the Defence Ministry, General
von Bredow; Gregor Strasser; and Papen’s two assistants, who served
as substitutes for Papen himself, von Bose and Edgar Jung. Bose was
talking to two industrialists from the Rhineland in the Vice-Chancellery
when he was asked to step into the next room and see three S.S. men
who had just arrived: shots rang out, and when the door was opened
the S.S. men had gone and Bose was lying dead on the floor. A number
of other Catholic leaders were shot, the most important being Erich
Klausener, the German leader of Catholic Action.

Many of those murdered had little, if any, connection with Roehm
or the S.A., and fell victims to private quarrels. Kahr, who had played
a big role in 1923, but had since retired — he was now seventy-three—
was found in a swamp near Dachau; his body was hacked to pieces.
Father Bernhard Stempfle, who had once revised the proofs of Mein
Kampf, was discovered in the woods outside Munich; he had been shot
“while trying to escape.” In Hirschberg, Silesia, a group of Jews was
murdered, for no other apparent reason than to amuse the local S.S.
In Munich, on the evening of 30 June, Dr. Willi Schmidt, the music
critic of the Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten, was playing the ’cello
in his flat while his wife made supper and their three children were
playing. Suddenly the door bell rang and four armed S.S. men came
to take him away without explanation. There never was any explanation,
except that the S.S. men were looking for someone else with the same
name and shot the wrong man. When Frau Schmidt got her husband’s
body back, she was warned under no circumstances to open the coffin:
the S.S. sent her a sum of money in recognition of her loss and their
mistake. When she refused to accept it, Himmler rang up and told her
to take the money and keep quiet. When she still refused, Hess called
and eventually, through his help, Frau Schmidt secured a pension: she
should think of her husband’s death, Hess told her, as the death of a
martyr for a great cause.^

In an effort to prevent too much becoming known, Goebbels forbade
German newspapers to carry obituary notices of those who had been
executed or “had committed suicide.” The ban on any mention of what
had happened only led to exaggerated rumours and to the intensification
of the feeling of horror and fear. Not until 13 July did Hitler appear
before the Reichstag and reveal a part of the story.

^ Deposition of Kate Eva Hoerlm, the former wife of WiHi Schmidt, 7 July, 1945,
N.D. L-135.

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REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

Hitler was very much on the defensive, at least until the end of his
speech. He began with a lengthy recital of the achievements of National
Socialism, in defence of his policy as Chancellor. When he came to
describe the events leading up to 30 June he threw the whole blame
on Roehm, who had forced him to act against his own wishes. Hitler
gave great prominence to the charges of corruption, favouritism and
homosexuality against Roehm’s group, and went out of his way to
represent them as betraying the ordinary, decent S.A. man who had
been exploited by a depraved and unscrupulous leadership. Hitler did not
attempt, however, to conceal the real charges against Roehm. He spoke
of those who had become “uprooted and had thereby lost altogether
any sympathy with any ordered human society. They became revolu-
tionaries who favoured revolution for its own sake and desired to sec
revolution established as a permanent condition,” But, Hitler replied,
“for us the Revolution is no permanent condition. When some mortal
check IS imposed with violence upon the natural development of a
people, then the artificially interrupted evolution can rightly by a deed
of violence open up the way for itself in order to regain liberty to pursue
its natural development. But there can be no such thing as a state of
permanent revolution; neither can any beneficent development be
secured by means of periodically recurrent revolts.”

Hitler’s references to the quarrel between Roehm and the Army
were still clearer. After outlining Roehm’s plan for a single organization
to incorporate the Army and the S.A., with himself as Minister of
Defence, Hitler spoke of his unalterable opposition to Roehm’s ideas.
“For fourteen years I have stated consistently that the fighting organiza-
tions of the Party are political institutions and that they have nothing
to do with the Army ” He recalled his promise to Hindenburg that he
would keep the Army out of politics, and spoke in glowing terms of
his debt to General von Blomberg, the Minister of Defence, “who
reconciled the Army with those who were once revolutionaries and has
linked it up with their Government today.” Finally he repeated the
promise, which to the Army leaders was the covenant m which they
placed their faith; “In the State there is only one bearer of arms, and
that IS the Army ; there is only one bearer of the political will, and that
is the National Socialist Party.”

The Officer Corps, intent only on preserving the privileged position
of the Army, and indifferent to what happened in Germany so long as
Nazification stopped short of the military institutions of the country,
could see no further than the ends of their own noses. The menace

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CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

of the S.A. was brokea for good on the week-end of 30 June. Under
Viktor Lutze, its new Chief of Staff, it never again played an independent,
or even a prominent, role in the Third Reich. But already a new and
far more dangerous challenge to the autonomy of the Army was taking
shape. As a reward for their service m the Roehm purge, Himmler’s
S.S. were now given their independence of the S.A., and placed directly
under Hitler’s orders with Himmler as S.S. Reichsfuehrer. At last the
long dispute between Hitler and Roehm was ended, and Hitler had got
what he had always wanted, an absolutely dependable and unquestion-
ing instrument of pohtical action. When, in 1936, Himmler acquired
control of all German police forces as well, the framework of Hitler’s
police state was complete. What the Army leaders did not foresee was
that, within less than ten years of Roehm’s murder, the S.S. would
have succeeded, where the S.A. had failed, in establishing a Party army
in open rivalry with the generals’ army, daily encroaching still further
on their once proud but now sadly reduced position. No group of men
was to suffer so sharp a reversal of their calculations as the Army officers,
who, in the summer of 1934, ostentatiously held aloof from what
happened in Germany and expressed an arrogant satisfaction at the
Chancellor’s quickness in seeing where the real power m Germany
lay.

For anyone less blind than the generals, the way in which Hitler
dealt with the threat of a second revolution must have brought con-
sternation rather than satisfaction. Never had Hitler made so patent
his total indifference to any respect for law or humanity, and his deter-
mination to preserve his power at any cost. Never had he illustrated so
clearly the revolutionary character of his regime as in disowning the
revolution. At the close of his Reichstag speech Hitler brushed aside
the suggestion that the guilty men should have been tried before execu-
tion. “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the
regular courts of justice, then all I can say to him is this: in this hour I
was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became
the supreme Justiciar {oberster Genchtsherr) of the German people.” . . .
Lest there should be any doubt of the moral to be drawn, Hitler added:
“And everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand
to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.’’^

If Hitler’s hesitations in the last ten days of June had led people to
say that he had virtually abdicated, he triumphantly re-asserted and
increased his authority in the week-end that followed. Papen’s Marburg
^ Baynes: vol. 1, pages 290-328.

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REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

Speech had its answer, but it was Hitler, not Papen and the Reaktion,
the peddlers of Christian Conservatism, who emerged triumphant
from the test of June, 1934.

When Rauschning called on Hitler shortly after the purge. Hitler
remarked: “They underestimate me because I've risen from below;
because I haven’t had an education, because I haven’t the manners
that their sparrow brains think right. ... But I have spoiled their
plans. They thought I wouldn’t dare; they thought I was afraid. They
saw me already wriggling in their net. They thought I was their tool,
and behind my back they laughed at me and said I had no power now,
that I had lost my Party. I saw through all that long ago. I’ve given
them a cuff on the ear that they'll long remember. What I have lost
in the trial of the S.A., I shall regain by the verdict on these feudal
gamblers and professional card-sharpers. ... I stand here stronger
than ever before. Forward, meine Herren Papen and Hugenberg! I am
ready for the next round.”^

The easy assurances of Neurath, who had told Rauschning in the
spring of 1934; “Let it run its course, in five years no one will remember
it,”^ were shown to be as worthless as Papen’s confident declarations
of January, 1933. Papen was glad enough to escape with his life and
hurriedly accepted the offer to go to Vienna as Hitler’s special envoy.

A little late in the day the ex-Vice-Chancellor was beginning to learn
that he who sups with the Devil needs a very long spoon.

Now that Hitler had with one blow removed the pressure on him
from both the Left and the Right, he could piocced to deal with the ,
problem of the Succession at his leisure. Having honoured his own
share of the pact with the Army, he could claim the fulfilment of the
Army’s promise, and in General von Bloinberg he had found a man
he could rely on. When President von Hindenburg died on the morning
of 2 August, all had been arranged There was neither hitch nor delay.
Within an hour came the announcement that the office of President
would henceforward be merged with that of the Chancellor, and that
Hitler would become the Head of the State— as well as Supreme
Commander-io-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Reich. Among the
signatures at the foot of the law announcing these changes were those
of von Papen, von Neurath, Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, General von
Blomberg and Schacht: the representatives of Conservatism acquiesced
in their own defeat.

The same day the officers and men of the German Army took the
1 Rauschning: Hiller Speaks, pages 172-3. ^ ibid., page 152.

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CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

oath of allegiance to their new commander-in-chief. The form of the
oath was significant. The Army was called on to swear allegiance not
to the Constitution, or to the Fatherland, but to Hitler personally:
“I swear by God this holy oath: I will render unconditional obedience
to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and People, Adolf Hitler, the
Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready, as a
brave soldier, to stake my life at any time for this oath.” On 6
August, when the Reichstag assembled m the Kroll Opera House to
hear Hitler’s funeral oration, and on 7 August, when the old Field-
Marshal was buried with the full honours of State in the monument
to his victory at Tannenberg, Hitler renewed the symbolic gesture of
Potsdam — but with a difference Between March, 1933, and August,
1934, the balance of power in Geimany had shifted decisively in Hitler’s
favour. In that year and a half he had mastered the machine of State,
suppressed the opposition, dispensed with his allies, asserted his
authority over the Party and S.A , and secured for himself the pre-
rogatives of the Head of the Slate and Commander-in-Chief of the
Armed Forces. The Nazi revolution was complete: Hitler had become
the dictator of Germany.

On 19 August the German people was invited to express by a plebiscite
its approval of Hitler’s assumption of Hindenburg’s office as Fuehrer
and Reich Chancellor, the official title by which Hitler was now to be
known. The Political Testament of President Hindenburg, much dis-
cussed but so far not discovered, was now conveniently produced,
shorn of any reference to the restoration of the monarchy it may have
contained. In it the old Field-Marshal spoke warmly of Hitler’s work
in creating national unity and, lest there should be any doubt. Colonel
Oskar von Hindenburg was put up to broadcast on the eve of the plebis-
cite. “My father,” he told the German people, “had himself seen in Adolf
Hitler his own direct successor as Head of the German State, and I am
acting according to my father’s intention when I call on all German
men and women to vote for the handing over of my father’s office to
the Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor.”^

On the day of the plebiscite 95-7 per cent of the forty-five and a half
million voters went to the polls, and more than thirty-eight million
voted “Yes,” 89 93 percent of the votes cast. Four and a quarter millions
had the courage to vote “No”; another eight hundred and seventy
thousand spoiled their papers.

It was an impressive majority, and when the Party Rally was held

‘ Quoted by Schwertfeger, page 449. Cf , ibid., pages 439-45 for the text of Hinden-
burg’s Testament as it was published.

282

REVOLUTION AFTER POWER

at Nuremberg in September Hitler was in benign mood. In Ms pro-
clamation be spoke a good deal about the Nazi revolution which had
now, he announced, achieved its object and come to an end. “Just as

the world cannot live on wars, so peoples cannot live on revolutions

Revolutions,” he added, “have always been rare in Germany. The Age
of Nerves of the nineteenth century has found its close with us. In the
next thousand years there will be no other revoludon in Germany.”^

It was an ambitious epitaph.

^ Hitler’s Proclamation to the Parteitag, 5 September, 1934; Baynes: vol. I, pages
328-9

283

CHAPTER SIX

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE

1933—1937

It does not lie within the scope of this study to present a pic-
ture of the totalitarian system in Germany, or of its manifold activities
in economic and social policy, the elaboration of the police State, con-
trol of the courts, the r6gime’s attitude towards the Churches and the
strait-jacketing of education. Hitler bore the final responsibility for
whatever was done by the regime, but he hated the routine work of
government, and, once he had stabilized his power, he showed com-
paratively httle interest in what was done by his departmental Ministers
except to lay down general lines of policy. In the Third Reich each of
the Party bosses, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler and Ley, created a
private empire for himself, while the Gauleiters on a lower level enjoyed
the control of their own local pashaliks. Hitler deliberately allowed
this to happen; the rivalries which resulted only increased his power as
supreme arbiter. Nobody ever had any doubt where the final authority
f lay — the examples of Roehm and Gregor Strasser were there, if anyone
needed reminding — and Hitler admitted no equals. But so long as his
suspicions were not stirred, he left the business of running the country
very much in the hands of his lieutenants. Not until his own position,
or special interests, were affected did he rouse himself to intervene
actively. An illustration of this is the case of Dr. Schacht. “As long as
I lemained in office,” Schacht wrote later, “whether at the Reichsbank
or the Ministry of Economics, Hitler never interfered with my work.
He never attempted to give me any mstructions, but let me carry out
my own ideas in my own way and without criticism. . . . However,
when he realized that the moderation of my financial policy was a
stumbling block to his reckless plans (in foreign policy), he began,
with Goering’s connivance, to go behind my back and counter my
arrangements.”^

284

* Schacht, pages 55-6

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

Certain subjects, even in internal affairs, always interested Hitler-
building plans, and anti-Semitic legislation, for instance— but he rapidly
became absorbed in the two fields of foreign policy and preparation
for war. At Nuremberg Goering told the Court: “Foreign policy above
all was the Fuehrer’s very own realm. By that I mean to say that foreign
policy on the one hand, and the leadership of the Armed Forces on the
other, enlisted the Fuehrer’s greatest interest and were his main activity.
He busied himself exceptionally with the details in both these spheres.”^

This was not accidental. Hitler was not interested in administration,
or carrying out a programme of reform— he was interested in power.
The Party had been the instrument by which he acquired power in Ger-
many; the State was now to be the instrument by which he meant to
acquire power in Europe. From his schooldays at Linz Hitler had been
a violent German nationalist; he felt the defeat of Germany as a personal
disaster, and from the beginning of his political career had identified
his own ambition with the re-establishment and extension of German
power. The reversal of the verdict of 1918, the overthrow of the Peace
Settlement of 1919, and the realization of the Pan-German dream of
a German-dominated Europe, were the hard core of his political
programme.

The aggressive— or, to use the favourite Nazi word, dynamic — foreign
policy which Germany began to follow under Hiller’s leadership cor-
responded to tlie most powerful force in modern German history,
German nationalism and the exaltation of the Machtstaat, the Power
State. It gave expression to the long-smouldering rebellion of the
German people against the defeat of 1918 and the humiliation of the ,
Peace Settlement. Through the sense of national unity which it fostered.

It served to strengthen the political foundations of the regime in popular
support. Through the revived industrial activity which it stimulated
by the rearmament programme, it helped to overcome the economic
crisis in which the Republic had foundered. The recovery and re-asser-
tion of German power abroad were substitute satisfactions for the
frustrated social revolution at home; the revolutionary impulse in
Nazism was diverted into challenging the existing order outside Ger-
many’s frontiers and the creation of a European New Order, in which
the big jobs and the privileges would go to the Herrenvolk. Above all,
such a foreign policy was the logical projection of that unappeased
will to power, both in Hitler himself and in the Nazi Party, which,
having conquered power in Germany, was now eager to extend its
mastery further.

* N.P., part IX, page 174.

285

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

of the French occupation of the Ruhr, in 1923, Hitler
.hat the first task was to overthrow the Repubhc, rather
.e German strength in a fight with the French which the
ere bound to lose. It ought to have been recognized, he
Mem Kampf, “that the strength of a nation lies, first of
alknoci*. its arms, but in its will, and that before conquering the external
enemy the enemy at home would have to be eliminated.”^ Hitler never
wavered in this view. At Diisseldorf in 1932 he argued that Germany’s
misfortunes were due, not so much to the Treaty of Versailles, as to
the internal weaknesses and divisions which allowed the Treaty to be
imposed on her. “We are not the victims of the treaties, but the treaties
are the consequences of our own mistakes; and if I wish in any way to
better the situation, I must first change the value of the nation; I must
above all recognize that it is not the primacy of foreign politics which
can determine our action in the domestic sphere — ^rather, the character
of our action in the domestic sphere is decisive for the character of the
success of our foreign pohcy.”^

The first prerequisite of a foreign policy was, therefore, to replace
the Republic by a strong, authoritarian government in Berlin. That
had been done; by now the way was clear for the second stage, the
removal of the limitations which had been placed on Germany’s free-
dom of action as the result of her defeat in 1918 and — as Hitler believed
—as a consequence of the weakness of the Republican Governments
and their betrayal of national interests.

In the 1920s Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “What a use could be made
of the Treaty of Versailles! . . . How each one of the points of that
Treaty could be branded in the minds and hearts of the German people
until sixty million men and women find their souls aflame with a feeling
of rage and shame; and a torrent of fire bursts forth as from a furnace,
and a will of steel is forged from it, with the common cry: "Wir wollen
wieder Waffen ! — We will have arms again!’ ”•*

If Hitler ever came to power there was little doubt that his first
objective in foreign policy would be to tear up the Treaty of Versailles,

^ Mein Kampf, page 555.

- Speech to the Industry Club at Dusseldorf, 27 January, 1932, Baynes: vol. I,
page 814.

® Mein Kampf, page 515.

286

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

and in January, 1941, he himself said, with considerable justification:
“My programme was to abolish the Treaty of Versailles. It is nonsense
for the rest of the world to pretend today that I did not rei’eal this
programme until 1933, or 1935, or 1937. Instead of listening to the
foolish chatter of emigres, these gentlemen would have been wiser to
read what I have written and rewritten thousands of times. No human
being has declared or recorded what he wanted more often than I.
Again and again I wrote these words— the Abolition of the Treaty of
Versailles.”^

In practice, now that reparations had been ended, this could only
mean Germany’s right to rearm on terms of full equality with other
nations, and the recovery of at least part of the territories lost in 1918-
1919: the Saar, Alsace-Lorraine, the German colonies, above all Danzig
and the lands incorporated m the new state of Poland.

But this was only a part of Hitler’s programme in foreign policy,
as Hitler had said quite plainly in Meiii Kampf: “To demand that the
1914 frontiers of Germany should be restored,” he wrote, “is a political
absurdity. . . . The confines of the Reich as they existed in 1914 were
thoroughly illogical ; because they were not really complete, in the sense
of including all the members of the German nation. . . . They were
temporary frontiers established in virtue of a political struggle that
had not been brought to a finish.”-

It is not difficult to see what Hitler meant by this. His aim was to
extend the frontiers of Germany to include those people of German
race and speech who, even in 1914, had lived outside the Reich, the
Germans of Austria and the Sudeten Germans of Czechoslovakia, who,
before 1914, had formed part, not of tlic German Empire, but of the
Hapsburg Monarchy.

Hitler was an Austrian. This is a ifict of the greatest importance in
understanding his foreign policy. For, in the 1860s, v/hen Bismarck
earned out the unification of Germany and founded the German Empire,
he dehberateiy excluded from it the Germans of the Hapsburg Mon-
archy. After the collapse of the Hapsburg Monarchy these Germans
still remained outside the German Reich: they became citizens either
of the Austrian Republic or, like the Germans of Bohemia and Moravia,
of Czechoslovakia. It was amongst these Germans of the old Hapsburg
Monarchy that there had sprung up before the war a violent Pan-
German nationalism which sought to re-establish a union of all Germans
in a single Greater Germany, and which was now violently opposed

‘ Speech in Berlin, 30 .lanuary, 1941; Pninge: page 216.

® Mem Kampf, page 529.

287

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

to the claims of the Czechs and the other former subject peoples of the
Monarchy to nationhood and equality with the Germans. The one
exception, already made in Mein Kampf, was the German population
of the South Tyrol, which was to be sacrificed to the needs of the alliance
with Fascist Italy.

Hitler was the heir to the ambitions and animosities of the pan-
German nationahsts of the old Monarchy. He saw himself as the man
destined to reverse the decision, not only of 1918, but of 1866. Born
on the frontier between Germany and Austria, he felt — as he says on
the opening page of Mein Kampf— c&ll&d upon to reunite the two Ger-
man states which had been left divided by Bismarck’s solution of the
German problem.^ This is the background to the annexation of
Austria, and to the wresting of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.
His hatred for the Czechs was the product of his early life in an empire
where the Germans felt themselves on the defensive against the rising
tide of Slav nationalism, most strongly represented in Hitler’s experi-
ence by the Czech working men whom he met in Vienna. Here, too, is
to be found one of the roots of the distinction Hitler made between the
Volk, all those of German race and speech, and the State, which need
not be co-extensive with the first, or might — as in the case of the old
Hapsburg Monarchy and Czechoslovakia — include peoples of different
races.

Even this does not exhaust the meaning of Hitler’s remark about the
inadequacy of Germany’s 1914 frontiers. For in the Nazi Party pro-
gramme, adopted as early as 1920, after the first two points — the union
of all Germans to form a Greater Germany, the abolition of the Peace
. Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain — there appears a third; “We
demand land and territory for the nourishment of our people and for
settling our surplus population.” The culmination of Hitler’s foreign
policy IS to be found in the demand for Lebensraum, living room for
the future of the Volk, which formed the basis for his programme of
expansion.

Ever since the great increase in Germany’s population and her rapid
economic expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century this
had been a familiar subject of discussion in Germany. Hitler’s criticism
of the policy followed up to 1914 is interesting and acute. There are,
he says in Mem Kampf, four possible answers to the problem of Ger-
many’s need to expand. The first two he dismisses as defeatist: these'

^ Bismaick’s solution of the problem of German unity, which excluded the Germans
of the Hapsburg Monarchy, was known by the formula of Klemdeutschland (Little
Germany) The alternative, eventually reahzed by Hitler with the annexation of
Austria and the Sudetenland, was Grossdeutschland, Greater Germany.

288

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

are the limitation of population, and what he calls internal colonization,
the intensified development of the territory she already possessed.
To adopt either of these alternatives was to give up the struggle, and,
since struggle is the law of life, a nation which ceases to struggle ceases
to be great.

A third answer was to be found in commercial expansion overseas
on the model of England. This was the policy pursued by the Kaiser’s
Germany, and led inevitably to a disastrous clash with England. It
was not a policy suited to the genius or traditions of the German people.
These could only find expression in the fourth policy, the one which
Hitler advocated, a continental policy of territorial expansion east-
wards, seeking Lebensraum for Germany in Eastern Europe, in the
rich plains of Poland, the Ukraine and Russia. Such a policy would
mean the resumption of that ancient struggle against the Slavs which
had founded Austria, the old Ostmark, and had earned the Order
of the Teutonic Knights along the southern shores of the Baltic into
East Prussia and beyond.

In all this, no doubt, one can discern the influence of Rosenberg,
the Baltic German who had fled from Russia after the Revolution,
But the belief in the civilizing mission of Germany in Eastern Europe
based on her cultural superiority was an old German dream. General
Ludendorff, for instance, the least imaginative of men, describes in
his memoirs how he felt on taking up his quarters at Kovnod “Kovno
IS a typical Russian town, with low, mean wooden houses and wide
streets. From the hills which closely encircle the town there is an
interesting view of the town and the confluence of the Niemen and the
Villa. On the further bank of the Niemen there stands the tower of an '
old German castle of the Teutonic Knights, a symbol of German civiliza-
tion in the East. ... My mind was flooded with overwhelming historical
memories ; I determined to renew in the occupied territories that work
of civilization at which the Germans had laboured in these lands for
many centuries. The population, made up as it is of such a mixture
of races, has never produced a culture of its own, and, left to itself,
would succumb to Polish domination.”*

In 1918, when he dictated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which vir-
tually dismembered European Russia, and when a German Army of
Occupation proceeded to strip the Ukraine, Ludendorff must have felt
well on the way to realising his historical dreams. Just over twenty
years later Hitler was to enleitain even more grandiose schemes as a

‘ Later known as Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania.

* General Each Ludeudorfr; My Wat Memories (London, 1919), vol. I, pages 178-9.

L H.— K 289

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

German Army again occupied the Ukraine and German guns shelled
Leningrad. The continuity of Germany’s eastern pohcy is impressive.

The logical consequence of such a policy was, of course, war with
Russia. Hitler faced and accepted this as early as the 1920s when he
was writing Mein Kampf.

We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the south and west
of Europe [he wrote] and turn our eyes towards the lands of the east. We
tinaliy put a stop to the colonial and commercial policy of pre-war times and
pass over to the territorial policy of the future. But when we speak of new
territory in Europe today, we must principally think of Russia and the
border states subject to her. Destiny itself seems to wish to pomt out the way
for us here. , . , This colossal empire in the east is ripe for dissolution.^

Bismarck had followed a different policy towards Russia, laying
great stress on the need to preserve close relations between Berlin and
St. Petersburg. After 1918 this conception of foreign policy reappeared
in the argument that Germany and Russia should make common cause
as the two dissatisfied Powers with an interest in overthi'owing the
Peace Settlement of 1919. Such a view had advocates in the Army as
well as the German Foreign Office, and found a temporary, but sen-
sational, expression in the Treaty of Rapallo of 1922. Hitler was an out-
and-out opponent of any such plan. Post-war Russia, he argued, was
no longer the Russia with which Bismarck had dealt. Moscow had
become the home not only of Bolshevism, but of the Jewish world-
conspiracy, the two implacable enemies of Germany. This conflict
over the policy to be pursued towards Russia has never been wholly
'absent from German foreign policy, and it was reflected inside the
leadership of the Nazi Party.^ The pro-Russian school seemed to come
into its own at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. But Hitler’s own views
altered remarkably little. The Pact was a temporary expedient, no more;
and when the German armies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 it was
in execution of a policy the outlines of which are already to be found
in Mem Kampf.

It was to the conquest of Eastern Europe and Russia that Hitler
looked for the opportunity to build his New Order, the empire of the
Herrenvolk based upon the slave-labour of the inferior races. The
year before he came to power, in the summer of 1932, Hitler told a

^ Mein Kampf ^ page 533

® Generai Haushofer, for instance, the founder of the Munich school of geo-
politics, and a close friend of Hess, was one of those who favoured a pro-Russian
alignment in foreign policy So, at one time, accoiding to Rauschning, was Erich
Koch, the iniuential Gauleiter of East Piussia, Cf Hitlei Speaks page 133.

290

THE COl.MERrEIT PEACI , 1933-1937

gathering of the Parly elite in the Brown House- “Our great experi-
mental field is in the East. There the new European social order will
arise, and this i, the great significance of o-ar Eastern policy. Certainly
we shall admit to our ncv. ruling class, members of other nations who
have been worthy in our cause. ... In fact, we shall very soon have
overstepped the bounds of the narrow nationalism of today. World
empires arise on a national basis, bat very quickly they leave it far
behind.”' Such plans involved the movement of populations, the
deliberate depression of whole laces to a lovver standanJof life and
civilization, the denial of any chance of education or medical fiicilities,
even, in the case of the Jews, their syste.matic extermination.

In these schemes for redrawing the map of the world and remodelling
the distribution of power upon biological principles the authentic
flavour of Nazi geopolitics is to be discovered. Hitler’s ovcr-mHamed
imagination set no bounds to the expansion of Nazi power. As Papen
remarked after the war: “It was on the limitless character of Nazi
aims that we ran aground.”" In the early 1930s these appeared no
more than the fantasies with which Hiller beguiled the early morning
hours round the fire in the Bergliuf; by the early 1940s, however, the
fantastic was on the verge of being translated into reality. "

These ideas did not depend upon the triumphs of 1938-1941 for their
conception. They can be traced from the pages of Mein Kampf, througli
the conversations recorded by Rauschmng in 1932-1934, up to the talks
in the Fiiehier’s H.Q. in 1941-1942 and Himmlei’s wartime addresses
to the S.S. But m 1933-193-t, in the first year or two after Hitler had
come to power, the prospects of accomplishing even the annexation of
Austria, still less of overrunning Russia, appeared remote. Germany
was politically isolated. Economically, she was only beginning to
recover from the worst slump in her history. Her army, limited to the
hundred thousand men permitted by the Treaty, was easily outnumbered
by that of France alone. A move in any direction— in the west, against
Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland— appeared certain to run into
the network of alliances with which France sought to strengthen her
security. So impressed were the German diplomats and the German
generals with the strength of the obstacles in Germany’s way that up

* Rauschning- Hitler Speaks, page 50. ® Papen’s Afiidavit. N.D. 3300-I’S.

* For a (iiscus.sion of the Nazi New Ordei, see below, pages 631-42.

291

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

to 1938, and indeed up to the Battle of France in 1940, their advice was
always on the side of caution.

Hitler, on the other hand, became more and more sure of himself,
more and more contemptuous of the professionals’ advice. He was
convinced that he had a far keener appreciation of political — or military
— factors than the High Command or the Foreign Office, and he dazzled
them by the brilliant success of the bold tactics he adopted. Hitler took
office as Chancellor without any previous experience of government.
He had never even been a Reichstag deputy, leave alone a minister.
He had no knowledge of any country outside Germany and Austna,
and spoke no foreign language. His sole experience of politics had been
as a Party leader and agitator. He knew nothing and cared less for
official views and traditions; he was suspicious of anyone who might
try to instruct him. In the short run, these were assets. He refused to
be impressed by the strength of the opposition his schemes were likely
to meet, or to be restricted to the conventional methods of diplomacy.
He displayed a skill in propaganda and a mastery of deceit, a finesse
in exploring the weaknesses of his opponents and a crudeness in ex-
ploiting the strength of his own position which he had learned in the
struggle for power in Germany and which he now applied to inter-
national relations with even more remarkable results.

This is not to suggest that Hitler, any more than Bismarck in the
1860s, foresaw in 1933 exactly how events would develop in the course
of the next decade. No man was more of an opportunist, as the Nazi-
Soviet Pact shows. No man had more luck. But Hitler knew how to
turn events to his advantage. He knew what he wanted and he held
the initiative. His principal opponents. Great Britain and France, knew
only what they did not want — war — and were always on the defensive.
The fact that Hitler was perfectly ready to risk war, and prepared for
it from the day he came to power, gave him a still greater advantage.
Disinclined to bestir themselves, the British and the French were eager
to snatch at any hope of avoiding a conflict and only too ready to go
on believing in Hitler’s pacific assurances.

The first and indispensable step was to rearm. Until he had the back-
ing of military power for his diplomacy. Hitler’s foreign pohcy was
bound to be restricted in its scope. This period during which the
German Armed Forces were being expanded and re-equipped, was one
of considerable danger. Until rearmament reached a certain stage
Germany was highly vulnerable to any preventive action which France
or the other Powers might take, and the provisions of the Treaty of
292

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

Versailles could be used to provide grounds for such intervention.
The overriding objective of German foreign policy, therefore, for the
first years of Hitler’s rdgime was to avoid such action, and thus to secure
the time and the freedom to rebuild Germany’s military power.

Hitler’s speeches from this period are masterpieces of the art of pro-
paganda. He chose his ground with care. Well aware of the fact that
there were many abroad— especially in Great Britain — who had long
felt uneasy about the shortcomings of the Peace Settlement, he hinged
all arguments upon the unequal treatment of Germany after the war
and the perpetuation of the distinction between victors and vanquished.
This had three great advantages, It invoked sympathy for Germany,
the defeated nation unfairly treated. It allowed Hitler to appear as the
representative of reason and justice, protesting against the unreasonable-
ness and injustice of Germany’s former opponents. It enabled him to
turn round and use with great effect against the supporters of the League
of Nations all the slogans of Wilsonian idealism, from self-determina-
tion to a peace founded upon justice.

Hitler struck this note in the famous Frwdemrcde, or Peace Speech,
which he delivered before the Reichstag on 17 May, 1933.^ With an
eye to the Disarmament Conference meeting in Geneva, he presented
Germany as the one nation which had so far disarmed and now de-
manded the fulfilment of their promises by the other Powers. If they
refused to carry out these promises and disarm themselves, he argued,
it could only mean that they sought, under cover of the Peace Settle-
ment and the League of Nations, to degrade the German people per-
manently to the status of a second-class nation unable to defend itself.
Hitler spoke with deep feeling of his dishke of war:

It is ill the interests of ail that piesent-day problems should be solved in a
reasonable and peaceful manner. . . . The application of violence of any kind
m Euiopc could have no favourable effect upon the political and economic
position. . . . The outbreak of such unlimited madness would necessarily
cause the collapse of the present social and political order. . . .

On the other hand, the disqualification of a great people cannot be
permanently maintained, but must at some time be brought to an end. How
long IS it thought that such an injustice can be imposed on a great nation?
. . . Germany, m demanding equality of rights such as can only be achieved
by the disarmament of other nations, has a moral right to do so, since she
has herself carried out the provisions of the tieaties.

Germany, Hitler continued, was perfectly ready to disband her entire
military establishment, to renounce all offensive weapons, to agree to

^ Text in Baynes; vol. II, pages 1,041-58.

293

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

any solemn pact of non-aggression — on one condition only, that the
other Powers did the same. She was the only nation which had any cause
to fear invasion, yet she asked not for rearmament, but for the disarma-
ment of the other states. “We have,” he concluded, “no more earnest
desire than to contribute to the final healing of the wounds caused by
the war and the Treaty of Versailles.”

In October, 1933, when it became clear that the French — uneasily
conscious of the infenonty of their manpower and industrial resources
to those of Germany — were not prepared to disarm. Hitler pushed his
argument a stage furthci . On 14 October he announced that Germany
was driven, by the denial of equal rights, to withdraw from the Dis-
armament Conference and the League of Nations. Germany had tried
to co-operate, but had sulfered a bitter disillusionment and humiliation.
In sorrow, rather than in anger, he had decided to take this step, which
was demanded by the self-respect of the German people.

Former German Governments [he declared in a wireless address to the
nation on the same day] entered the League of Nations in the hope and
confidence that in the League they would find a forum for a just settlement
of the interests of peoples, above all for a sincere reconciliation with their
former foes. But this presupposes the recognition of the ultimate restoration
of the Gennan people to equality of rights. ... To be written down as a
member of such an institution possessing no such equality of riglits is, for an
honour-loving nation of sixty-five million folk and for a government which
loves honour no less, an intolerable humiliation! . . .

No war can become humanity’s permanent state; no peace can be the
perpetuation of war. One day Conquerors and Conquered must find them way
back into the community of mutual understanding and confidence. For a
decade and a half the German people has hoped and waited for the time
when at last the end of the war should also become the end of hate and
enmity. But the aim of the Treaty of Versailles seems not to be to give peace
to humanity at last, but rather to keep humanity in a state of everlasting
hatred.^

The withdrawal from the League was not without risks, in view of
Germany’s military inferiority, and a secret directive to the Armed
Forces, in case the League should apply sanctions, was issued by General
von Blomberg.*^ It was the first of Hitler’s gambles in foreign policy —
and it succeeded. Events wholly justified his diagnosis of the state of
mind of his opponents — tlieir embairassment in face of a case which
they felt was not without justice; the divided pubhc opinion of Great
Britain and France; the eagerness to be reassured and to patch up a

^ Speech of 14 October, 1933; Baynes, voi. li, pages 1,092-1,104.

»N.D. C-140.

294

THE COONlEREfcir PEACE, i9j3-I937

compromise, all those elements on which Hiller was to pLiy with such
skill time and again. With this in mind he issued a proclamatiofi in
v/hich he declared force to be useless in removing inleniational dif-
ferences, affirmed the German people’s hopes in disaimament and
renewed his offer to conclude pacts of non-aggression at any time.

Four days later, in an interview with Ward Price, the Daily Mail
Correspondent, Hitler was at his most coii\incing.

Nobody here [he told him] desires a repetition of war. Almost all the leade s
of the National Socialist movement were actual combatants. 1 have yet to
meet the combatant who desires a renewal of the horrors of those four and a
half years. . . , Our youth constitutes our sole hope for the future. Do you
imagine that we are bringing it up only to be sliot down on the battlefield?

We are manly enough to recognize that when one has lost a war, whether
one was responsible for it or not, one has to bear the consequences. We have
borne them, but it is intolerable for us as a nation of sixty-live millions that
wc should repeatedly be di-honouied and hiimiiiated. Wc wd! | ut up with
no more of this persistent disci immation against Germany. So long as I live
I Will never put my signature as a statesman to any contract winch I could
not sign with self-iespect in private life. 1 will maintain th«s icsolution,
even if it means my rum! For I w.ll sign no dccumcni with a mental reserva-
tion not to fulfil it. What I sign, I will stand by. What I cannot stand by, I
will not sign.^

In another interview, published by the Paris paper, Le Afatin^ on
22 November, Hitler declared categorically that, once the question of
the Saar had been settled, there w'cre no further issues between Germany
and France. He had renounced Alsace-Lorraine for good, and had
told the German people so.

Hitler’s cleverest stroke was to announce, on the same day as the
withdrawal from the League, that he would submit his decision at once
to a plebiscite. This was to invoke the sanctions of democracy against
the democratic nations. The day chosen was 12 November, the day
after the anniversary of the Armistice cf 1918. '‘See to itf* he told a
packed meeting at Breslau, “that this day shall later be recorded in the
history of our people as a day of salvation— that the record shall run:
on an eleventh of November, Ihc German people formally lost its
honour; fifteen years later came a Iw^elfth of November and then the
German people restored its honour to itself.”* All the long-pent-up
resentment of the German people against the loss of the war and the
Treaty of Versailles was expressed in the vote: ninety-six per cent of

^ Interview published in the Daily Maik 19 October, 1933; Bayiits* voL II, pages
1,105-8

^ Speech at Breslau, 4 November, 1933 ; Baynes: voi. II, pages 1,131-3.

295

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

those entitled to vote went to the polls, and ninety-five per cent voted
in approval of Hitler’s pohcy. On the same day, single-list elections for
the Reichstag gave the Nazi Party a solid majority of ninety-two per
cent.

To Rauschnmg, who had returned from Geneva just after Germany’s
withdrawal from the League, Hitler remarked that, now he had left
Geneva, he would more than ever speak the language of the League.
“And my party comrades,” he added, “will not fail to understand me
when they hear me speak of universal peace, disarmament and mutual
security pacts !”‘ These were the tactics of legality apphed to inter-
national relations with even greater success than in the fight for power
m Germany.

Hitler had now manoeuvred himself into the strongest possible
position in which to begin German rearmament. When the other Great
Powers sought to renew negotiations, Hitler replied that disarmament
was clearly out of the question. All that could be hoped for was a
convention for the limitation of armaments, and Germany’s terms for
co-operation would be the recognition of her right to raise an army of
three hundred thousand men, based on consciiption and short-term
enlistment. A prolonged exchange of notes throughcut the winter
and spring of 1933-1934 failed to produce agreement, but Hitler was
well content. Rearmament had already begun,'* while Great Britain
and France had placed themselves in the disadvantageous position,
from which they were never to recover until the war, of asking the
German dictator what concessions he would accept to reduce his price.

^ While these negotiations continued, and brought Mr. Eden to Berlin,
in April, 1934, on the first of many fruitless journeys undertaken by
British statesmen in these years, Hitler strengthened his hand in an
unexpected direction. No feature of the Treaty of Versailles stirred
more bitter feelings in Germany than the loss of territory to the new
State of Poland. Relations between Poland and Germany continued
to be strained throughout the history of the Weimar Repubhc, and
Stresemann refused to supplement the Locarno Pact by an eastern
Locarno, which would have meant Germany’s renunciation of her
claims to the return of Danzig, Silesia, Posen and the other surrendered
lands. Nowhere was the rise to power of the Nazis viewed with more
alarm than in Warsaw.

It caused a diplomatic sensation, therefore, when, on 26 January,
^ Rauschnmg: Hitler Speaks, page 116.

® Large increases in the German military budget were made public in March, 1934.

296

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

1934, Hitler announced that the first country with which Nazi Germany
had concluded a Non-Aggression Pact was Poland. The Pact was never
popular in Germany, but it was an astute move for Hitler to make.
Ultimately, there was no place for an independent Poland in Hitler's
Europe; the most she could hope for w'as the position of a vassal state.
But Hitler could not move against Poland for years to come. Instead of
accepting this situation with a bad grace, as the more sentimental
nationalists would have done, he turned it to his advantage, and made
an ostentatious parade of his enforced virtue.

Hitler was thus able to substantiate his claim to peaceful intentions
by pointing to the fact that his first diplomatic action, after leaving the
League, had been to initiate an entirely new course in one of the most
dangerous and intractable problems of Europe, Polish-German rela-
tions. In the same common-sense language as before, he told the
Reichstag: “Germans and Poles will have to learn to accept the fact
of each other’s existence. Hence it is nioie sensible to regulate this
state of affairs, which the last thousand years has not been able to
remove, and the next thousand will not be able to remove cither, in
such a way that the highest possible profit will accrue from it for both
nations.”^ The Pact with Poland was constantly used in the “peace"
speeches which Hitler continued to make througliout 1934, 1935 and
1936.

But the importance of the Pact was greater than its value as pro-
paganda. Poland, which had been the ally of France since 1921, was
one of the bastions of the French security system in Eastern Europe.

It was no secret that the Poles were becoming restive at the casual
way in which they felt they were treated by France. The Polish Govern- *
ment was beginning to turn away from the policy of collectite security,
supported by France, towards an independent neutrality, m which it
was hoped that Poland would be able to balance between her two great
neighbours, Germany and Russia. The Nazi offer of a Ten-Year
Pact fitted admirably into this new policy, and Hitler was thereby able
to weaken any possible united front against Germany. Here was the
first breach in the French alliance system and the first display of those
tactics of “one-by-one” with which he was to achieve so much.

This was a good beginning, but there were reminders during 1934 of
the dangers of the situation, notably m the case of Austria. Hitler’s
electoral successes between 1930 and 1933, followed by the Nazis*
capture of power, had revived National Socialism in Austria. The Party

‘Speech to the Reichstag, 30 Jvmuary, 1934; Baynes, vol. II, pages 1,131-1,171.

* 297

H L — K'

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

was reorganized by Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld, a thirty-year-old clerk
in the Vienna Bodmkreditanstalt, who lost his job when the bank failed
and took up full-time Party work. In three years the Vienna Nazi
Party’s membership grew from three hundred to forty thousand.

The incorporation of Austria into a Greater Germany occupied the
first place both in the Party programme of 1920 and in the opening
pages of Mein Kampf. The Austrian Nazis, who formed a part of the
German Party under Hiller’s leadersliip, lived and worked for the day
when the Anschluss should take place. With the help of Habicht, a
member of the German Reichstag and the man Hitler had appointed as
Inspector of the Austrian Party, Frauenfeld, Prokosch and the other
local leaders kept up a violent propaganda campaign, backed by intimi-
dation and acts of terrorism. There was no doubt where the funds came
from: anyone in Austria had only to tune in to the Munich radio station
across the frontier to get confirmation of the support the Austrian
Nazis were receiving from Germany. It appeared to be no more than
a matter of months, possibly of weeks, before the local Nazis would
try to capture power by a rising.

German relations with Austria, however, were not simply a family
affair, as Hitler tried to insist. France, the ally of Czechoslovakia, and
Italy, the patron of Dolfuss’s Fascist regime in Austria and of Hungary,
were bound to be disturbed by the prospect of an Anschluss and a
consequent Nazi advance to the threshold of the Balkans. The increased
Nazi agitation in Austria, the information the Dolfuss Government
succeeded in collecting of Nazi plans for a putsch, and the unfriendly
references Hitler made to Austria in his speech of 30 January, 1934,
* combined to produce a sense of urgency. No doubt Hitler was sincere
in disclaiming any intention of attacking Austria' if all went well there
would be no need of overt German intervention. But at this stage the
Powers, with Mussolini to prompt their sense of realism, were not so
credulous as they later became. On 17 February the governments of
France, Great Britain and Italy published a joint declaration to the effect
that they took “a common view of the necessity of maintaining Austria’s
independence and integrity in accordance with the relevant treaties.”
Exactly a month later Mussolini underlined Italy’s interest in Central
Europe by signing the Rome Protocols with Austria and Hungary.
Although primarily concerned with economic relations, the Protocols
strengthened the ties of political dependence between Italy and her
two client states on the Danube.

The Nazi agitation in Austria, however, continued, and Mussolini’s
suspicions were not removed by Hitler’s assurances at their meeting

298

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

at Venice in June, At last, on 25 July, while Madame Dolfuss and her
family were actually staying with Mussolini, the Austrian Nazis made
their attempt, breaking into the Vienna Chancellery and shooting
Dolfuss, while others occupied the radio station and announced the
appointment of Rintelen as Chancellor, Hitler was at Bayreuth when
he received the news. As he sat in his box listening to Wagner’s Rhein-
gold, his adjutants Schaub and Bruckner kept coming in to whisper
further news to him. “After the performance,’’ Fnedelind Wagner
recalls, “the Fuehrer was most excited. ... It was terrible to witness.
Although he could scarcely wipe the delight from his face. Hitler care-
fully ordered dinner in the restaurant as usual. ‘I must go across for
an hour and show myself,’ he said, ‘or people will think I had some-
thing to do with this’.”^

This was precisely what people did think, for the German Legation
in Vienna had been heavily implicated in the plot, and rumours of an
attempt had been rife in Munich and Berlin twenty-four hours before
the action began. Unfortunately, from Hitler’s point of view, although
Dolfuss died of his wounds, the putsch failed. The rebels in Vienna
were quickly overpowered, and after some days’ fighting in Styria
and Carinthia order was restored. The leaders, followed by several
thousand Austrian Nazis, only escaped by getting across the German
frontier. Even more important was the news that Mussolini, furious
at Hitler’s bad faith, had ordered Italian divisions to the Austrian
frontier and sent the Austrian Government an immediate telegram
promising Italian support in the defence of their country’s independence.

The Nazis had over-reached themselves, and Hitler had promptly *
to repudiate all connection with the conspiracy. The initial announce-
ment of the official German News Agency, couched in enthusiastic
terms, was hurriedly suppressed; the murderers of Dolfuss were sur-
rendered to the Austrian Government; Habicht, the Party Inspector
for Austria, was dismissed; the German Minister in Vienna was recalled
in disgrace; and Hitler appointed Papen to go to Vienna as Minister-
Extraordinary in order to repair the damage. The choice of Papen, a
Catholic, a Conservative and Vice-Chancellor in Hitler’s Cabinet, was
intended to conciliate the Austrians; at the same time it was a con-
venient way of getting rid of the man who had made the Marburg
speech and who had been lucky to escape with his life on the week-end
of 30 June. These hasty measures tided over the crisis and preserved
appearances. But it had been made plain enough to Hitler that he was

‘ Friedelind Wagner. The Roval Family of Bayreuth (London, 1948), pages 98-9

299

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

not yet in a position where he could afford to use high-handed methods,
and that the opposition to his schemes would have to be divided before
it could be overcome.

For the rest of 1934 the unanimity of the other Powers in face of
further German adventures was strengthened, rather than weakened.
In the summer Louis Barthou, the French Foreign Minister, made a
tour of eastern European capitals to put new life into the French alli-
ances with Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Poland. In May
France sharply rejected Sir John Simon’s proposals to concede equahty
of armaments to Hitler, and Barthou became active in advocating an
Eastern Locarno (which should include Russia as well as Germany),
with the object of tying Hitler’s hands in Eastern Europe as well as in
the west. The fact that the Soviet Union, hitherto one of the most out-
spoken critics of Geneva, was now willing to join the League of Nations,
and was elected to a permanent seat on the Council in September,
lent colour to the belief that the Great Powers were awake to the
danger of a resurgent German nationalism.

Hitler could only continue to protest the innocence of his intentions.
“If it rests with Germany,” he told Ward Price in another interview in
August, “war will not come again. This country has a more profound
impression than any other of the evil that war causes. ... In our belief
Germany’s present-day problems cannot be settled by war.”^ When
M. Jean Goy, a deputy for the Seine, visited him in November, he made
much of the experiences which the ex-servicemen of Germany and France
had in common; they had been through too much in the last war ever
to allow war to break out again. “We know too well, you and I, the
uselessness and horror of war.” His one object was to build a new social
order in Germany; he had no time or energy to spare for war, and in
his social plans he was erecting a more enduring monument to fame
than any great captain after the most glorious victories. The interview
was duly published by Le Matin f indeed, the word “peace” was never
out of Hitler’s mouth at this time.

So the year ended quietly, but not without some cause for congratula-
tion on Hitler’s part. On 9 October Louis Barthou, the energetic French
Foreign Minister, who stood for a policy of firmness in face of Nazi
demands, was assassinated while welcoming King Alexander of Yugo-
slavia at Marseilles. His successor at the Quai d’Orsay was Pierre Laval,
a master of comhnazioni and shady political deals. Despite appearances,
Hitler held to his belief that behind the fapade of unity the Powers

^ Daily Mail, 6 August, 1934; Baynes- vol. II, pages 1,1814.

*£e Matin 18 November, 1934; ibid., pages 1,190-3.

300

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

lacked the will to oppose him or to combine together for long. In 1927
Hitler said to Otto Strasser: “There is no solidarity in Europe; there is
only submission.”^ It was the essential premise on which all his plans
depended; the next year, 1935, was to show how just was his diagnosis.

From the summer of 1934 the principal object of the Western Powers’
diplomacy was to persuade Germany to sign a pact of mutual assistance
covering Eastern Europe. Just as the Locarno Pact included France,
Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and Italy, each undertaking to come
to the immediate aid of France and Belgium, or Germany, if either
side were attacked by the other, so this Eastern Locarno would include
Russia, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the other states of
Eastern Europe and would involve the same obligation of automatic
assistance m the case of an attack.

Hitler had no intention of entering into any such scheme: it was not
aggression that he feared, but checks upon his freedom of action. His
preference — for obvious reasons — was for bilateral agreements, and
if he were to sign a multilateral pact of non-aggression it would only
be one from which all provisions for mutual aid had been removed, a
statement of good intentions unsupported by any guarantees to enforce
them. German opposition, which had already been made clear in 1934,
was powerfully assisted by that of Poland. Pilsudski was highly sus-
picious of Russia and anxious that Poland should not be pushed into ,
the front line of an anti-German combination — which could only mean
that Poland would be either the battleground of a new clash between
her two neighbours or the victim of a deal concluded between them at
her expense, as happened in 1939. Polish quarrels with Lithuania and
dislike of Czechoslovakia added further reasons to his reluctance to
enter any such all-embracing project. Pilsudski, and his successor Beck,
saw the only way out of Poland’s difficulties as a policy of balancing
between Moscow and Berlin, a policy which fatally overestimated
Poland’s strength, and fatally underestimated the danger from Ger-
many.

Hitler courted the Poles assiduously, constantly urging on them the
common interest Poland and Germany had in opposing Russia, “Po-
land,” he told the Polish Ambassador in November, 1933, “is an out-

^ Otto Strasser: Hitler and /, page 225.

301

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

post against Asia. . . . The other States should recognize this role of
Poland’s.”^

Goering, who was used by Hitler m the role of a candid friend of the
Poles, spoke even more plainly when he visited Warsaw at the end of
January, 1935. He began his conversations in the Polish Foreign Minis-
try by mentioning the possibility of a new partition of Poland by
agreement between Germany and Russia. But he did this only to dis-
miss it as a practical impossibihty: in fact, he continued. Hitler’s policy
needed a strong Poland, to form a common barrier with Germany
against the Soviet Union. In his talks with Polish generals and with
Marshal Pilsudski, Goering “outlined far-reaching plans, almost
suggesting an anti-Russian alliance and a joint attack on Russia. He
gave it to be understood that the Ukraine would become a Polish sphere
of influence and North-western Russia would be Germany’s.”^ The
Poles were wary of such seductive propositions, but they were impressed
by the friendliness of the German leaders, and in the course of 1935
relations between the two governments became steadily closer. Goering
visited Cracow for Pilsudski’s funeral in May. The same month Hitler
himself had a long conversation with the Ambassador, and after a
visit of the Pohsh Foreign Minister, Colonel Beck, to Berlin in July
the communiqud spoke of “a far-reaching agreement of views.” The
attention Hitler paid to Polish-German relations was to repay him
handsomely.

Meanwhile, the British and French Governments renewed their
attempts to reach a settlement with Germany. The Saar plebiscite in
, January, 1935, had produced a ninety per cent vote for the return of
the territory to Germany. The result had scarcely been in doubt,
although the Nazis cried it up inside Germany as a great victory and the
destruction of the first of the Versailles fetters. The removal of this
issue between France and Germany, which Hitler had constantly
described as the one territorial issue dividing them, seemed to offer a
better chance of finding the Fuehrer in a more reasonable mood.

The proposals which the British and French Ambassadors presented
to Hitler at the beginning of February, 1935, sketched the outline of a
general settlement which would cover the whole of Europe. The existing
Locarno Pact of mutual assistance, which applied to Western Europe,
was to be strengthened by the conclusion of an agreement to cover
unprovoked aggression from the air. At the same time it was to be

^ The Polish White Book (English translation, London, 1939), page 17.

“Ibid., pages 25-26: Count Szembek’s reports on Goering’s conversations in
Poland.

302

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

supplemented by two similar pacts of mutual assistance, one dealing
with Eastern Europe, the other with Central Europe.

Hitler faced a difficult decision. German rearmament had reached a
stage where further concealment would prove a hindrance. It seemed
clear from their proposals that the Western Powers would be prepared
to waive their objections to German rearmament in return for Ger-
many’s accession to their proposals for strengthening and extending
collective security. Against that Hitler had to set his anxiety to avoid
tying his hands, and his need of some dramatic stroke of foreign policy
to gratify the mood of nationalist expectation in Germany which had
so far received little satisfaction. On both these grounds a bold uni-
lateral repudiation of the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Ver-
sailles would suit him very much better than negotiations with the
Western Powers, in which he would be bound to make concessions in
return for French and British agreement. Could he afford to take the
risk?

Hitler’s first reply showed uncertainty. He welcomed the idea of
extending the original Locarno Pact to include attack from the air,
while remaining evasive on the question of the proposed Eastern and
Danubian Pacts. The German Government invited the British to con-
tinue discussions, and a visit to Berlin by the British Foreign Minister,
Sir John Simon, was arranged for 7 March. Before the visit could take
place, however, on 4 March the British Government published its
own plans for increased armaments, basing this on “the fact that Ger-
many was . . . rearming openly on a large scale, despite the provisions
of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles.”^ The British White Paper went
on to remark “that not only the forces, but the spirit in which the *
population, and especially the youth of the country, are being organized,
lend colour to, and substantiate, the general feeling of insecurity which
has already been incontestably generated.” Great indignation was
at once expressed in Germany, and Hitler contracted a “chill” which
made it necessary to postpone Sir John Simon’s visit. On the 9th the
German Government officially notified foreign governments that a
German Air Force was already in existence. This seems to have been
a kite with which to test the Western Powers’ reaction. As Sir John
Simon told the House of Commons that he and Mr. Eden were still
proposing to go to Berlin and nothing else happened, it appeared safe
to risk a more sensational announcement the next week-end. On 16
March, 1935, the German Government proclaimed its intention of
re-introducing conscription and building up a peacetime army of thirty-
‘ British White Paper, Cmd. 4827 of 1935

303

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

six divisions, with a numerical strength of five hundred and fifty thou-
sand men.

Four days before, the French Government had doubled the period
of service and reduced the age of enlistment in the French Army, in
order to make good the fall in the number of conscripts due to the
reduced birth-rate of the years 1914-1918. This served Hitler as a pre-
text for his own action. He was able to represent Germany as driven
reluctantly to take this step, purely in order to defend herself against
the warlike threats of her neighbours. From the time when the German
people, trusting in the assurances of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and
believing they were rendering a great service to mankind, had laid
down their arms, they had been deceived again and again in their
hopes of justice and their faith in the good intentions of others. Ger-
many, Hitler declared, was the one Power which had disarmed; now
that the other Powers, far from disarming themselves, were actually
beginning to increase their armaments, she had no option but to follow
suit.^

The announcement was received with enthusiasm in Germany, and
on 17 March, Heroes Memorial Day (Heldengedenktag), a brilliant
military ceremony in the State Opera House celebrated the rebirth
of the German Army. At Hitler’s side sat von Mackensen, the only
surviving field-marshal of the old Army. Afterwards, amid cheering
crowds, Hitler held a review of the new Army, including a detachment
of the Air Force. So widespread was German feeling against the Treaty
of Versailles, and so strong the pride in the German military tradition,
that German satisfaction at the announcement could be taken for
• granted. Everything turned on the reaction abroad to this first open
breach of the Treaty’s provisions. Hitler had anticipated protests, and
was prepared to discount them; what mattered was the action with
which the other signatories of the Treaty proposed to support their
protests.

The result more than justified the risks he had taken. The British
Government, after making a solemn protest, proceeded to ask whether
the Fuehrer was still ready to receive Sir John Simon. The French
appealed to the League, and an extraordinary session of the Council
was at once summoned, to be preceded by a conference between Great
Britain, France and Italy at Stresa. But the French Note, too, spoke
of searching for means of conciliation and of the need to dispel the
tension which had arisen. This was not the language of men who
intended to enforce their protests. When Sir John Simon and Mr. Eden
‘ Cf. Hitler’s Proclamation to the German People, 16 March, 1935.

304

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

at last visited Berlin at the end of March they found Hitler polite, even
charming, but perfectly sure of himself and firm in his refusal to con-
sider any pact of mutual assistance which included the Soviet Union.
He made a good deal of the service Germany was performing in safe-
guarding Europe against Communism, and, when the discussion moved
to German rearmament, asked: “Did Wellington, when Bliicher came
to his assistance at Waterloo, first ask the legal experts of the Foreign
Office whether the strength of the Prussian forces exceeded the limits
fixed by treaty?”^ It was the Englishmen who had come to ask for co-
operation and Hitler who was in the advantageous position of being
able to say “no,” without having anything to ask in return. The very
presence of the British representatives in Berlin, after the announcement
of 16 March, was a triumph for his diplomacy.

In the weeks that followed, the Western Powers continued to make
a display of European unity which, formally at least, was more impres-
sive. At Stresa, on 11 April, the British, French and Italian Govern-
ments condemned Germany’s action, reaffirmed their loyalty to the
Locarno Treaty and repeated their declaration on Austrian indepen-
dence. At Geneva the Council of the League duly censured Germany
and appointed a committee to consider what steps should be taken
the next time any State endangered peace by repudiating its obligations.
Finally, in May, the French Government, having faded to make head-
way with its plan for a general treaty of mutual assistance in Eastern
Europe, signed a pact with the Soviet Union by which each party under-
took to come to the aid of the other in case of an unprovoked attack.
This treaty was flanked by a similar pact, concluded at the same time,
between Russia and France’s most reliable ally, Czechoslovakia.

Yet, even if Hitler was taken aback by the strength of this belated
reaction, and if the Franco -Russian and Czech-Russian treaties in
particular faced him with awkward new possibilities, his confidence
in his own tactics was never shaken. He proceeded to test the strength
of this new-found unity; it did not take long to show its weaknesses.

On 21 May Hiller appeared before the Reichstag to deliver a long
and carefully prepared speech on foreign policy. It is a speech wortii
studying, for m it are to be found most of the tricks with which Hitler
lulled the suspicions and raised the hopes of the gullible. His answer
to the censure of the Pow'ers was not defiance, but redoubled assurances

' Paul Schmidt Statist auf Diploiimtischei Buhne (Bonn, 1949), page 300, and
Fiangois-Poncet, page 175.

305

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

of peace, an appeal to reason, justice and conscience. The new Germany,
he protested, was misunderstood, and his own attitude misrepresented.

No man ever spoke with greater feeling of the horror and stupidity
of war than Adolf Hitler.

The blood shed on the European continent m the course of the last three
hundred years bears no proportion to the national result of the events.
In the end France has remained France, Germany Germany, Poland Poland
and Italy Italy, What dynastic egoism, political passion and patriotic blind-
ness have attained in the way of apparently far-reaching political changes
by shedding rivers of blood has, as regards national feeling, done no more
than touched the skin of the nations. It has not substantially altered their
fundamental characters. If these States had applied merely a fi action of their
sacrifices to wiser purposes the success would certainly have been greater
and more permanent. ... If the nations attach so much importance to an
increase in the number of the inhabitants of a country they can achieve it
without tears in a simpler and more natural way. A sound social pohcy, by
increasing the readiness of a nation to have children, can give its own
people more children in a few years than the number of aliens that could be
conquered and made subject to that nation by war.’-

Collective security, Hitler pointed out, was a Wilsonian idea, but
Germany’s faith m Wilsonian ideas, at least as practised by the former
Allies, had been destroyed by her treatment after the war, Germany
had been denied equality, had been treated as a nation with second-class
rights, and driven to rearm by the failure of the other Powers to carry
out their obligation to disarm. Despite this experience, Germany was
still prepared to co-operate in the search for security. But she had rooted
objections to the proposal of multilateral pacts, for this was the way
to spread, not to localize war. Moreover, in the east of Europe, Hitler
declared, there was a special case, the existence of a State, Bolshevik
Russia, pledged to destroy the independence of Europe, a State with
which a National Socialist Germany could never come to terms.

What Hitler offered in place of the “unrealistic” proposal of multi-
lateral treaties was the signature of non-aggression pacts with all
Germany’s neighbours. The only exception he made was Lithuania,
since Lithuania’s continued possession of the German Memelland was
a wrong which the German people could never accept, and a plain
denial of that right of self-determination proclaimed by Wilson. Ger-
many’s improved relations with Poland, he did not fail to add, showed
how great a contribution such pacts could make to the cause of peace:
this was the practical way in which Germany set about removing inter-
national misunderstandings.

’ Text of the speech in Baynes- vol. II, pages 1,218-47.

306

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

Hitler supported his offer with the most convincing display of good-
will. The fact that Germany had repudiated the disarmament clauses
of the Treaty of Versailles did not mean that she had anything but the
strictest regard for the Treaty’s other provisions— including the demili-
tarization of the Rhineland — or for her other obligations under the
Locarno Treaty. She had no intention of annexing Austria and was
perfectly ready to strengthen the Locarno Pact by an agreement on
air attack, such as Great Britain and France had suggested. She was
ready to agree to the abolition of heavy arms, such as the heaviest tanks
and artillery; to limit the use of other weapons— such as the bomber
and poison gas — by international convention; indeed, to accept an
over-all limitation of armaments provided that it was to apply to all the
Powers. Hitler laid particular stress on his willingness to limit German
naval power to thirty-five per cent of the strength of the British Navy.

He understood very well, he declared, the special needs of the British
Empire, and had no intention of starting a new naval rivalry with Great
Britain. He ended with a confession of his faith in peace. “Whoever
lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos. Wc,
however, live in the firm conviction that in our time will be fulfilled, not
the decline, but the renaissance of the West. That Germany may make
an imperishable contribution to this great work is our proud hope and
our unshakable belief.”

Hitler’s mastery of the language of Geneva was unequalled. His grasp
of the mood of public opinion in the Western democracies was startling,
considering that he had never visited any of them and spoke no foreign
language. He understood intuitively their longing for peace, the idealism
of the pacifists, the uneasy conscience of the liberals, the reluctance of •
the great mass of their peoples to look beyond their own private affairs.

At this stage in the game these were greater assets than the uncompleted
panzer divisions and bomber fleets he was still building, and Hitlcr
used them with the same skill he had shown in playing on German
grievances and illusions.

In Mein Kampf Hitler had written : “For a long time to come there
will be only two Powers in Europe with which it may be possible for
Germany to conclude an alliance. These Powers are Great Britain and
Italy.”^ The greatest blunder of the Kaiser’s Government — prophetic
words — had been to quarrel with Britain and Russia at the same time:
Germany’s future lay in the east, a continental future, and her natural
ally was Great Britain, whose power was colonial, commercial and naval,

^ Mm Kampf, page 50*1.

307

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

with no territorial interests on the continent of Europe. “Only by
alhance with England was it possible (before 1914) to safeguard the
rear of the new German crusade. ... No sacrifice should have been
considered too great, if it was a necessary means of gaining England’s
friendship. Colonial and naval ambitions should have been aban-
doned.”^

Although Hitler’s attitude towards Britain was modified later by
growing contempt for the weakness of her policy and the credulity of
her governments, the idea of an alhance with her attracted him through-
out his life. It was an alhance which could only, in Hitler’s view, be
made on condition that Britain abandoned her old balance-of-power
policy in Europe, accepted the prospect of a German hegemony on the
Continent and left Germany a free hand in attaining it. Even during the
war Hitler persisted in believing that an alliance with Germany on these
terms was in Britain’s own interests, continually expressed his regret
that the British had been so stupid as not to see this, and never quite
gave up the hope that he would be able to overcome their obstinacy
and persuade them to accept his view. No British Government, even
before the war, was prepared to go as far as an alliance on these terms,
yet there was a section of British opinion which was sufficiently im-
pressed by Hitler’s arguments to be attracted to the idea of a settle-
ment which would have left him virtually a free hand in Central and
Eastern Europe, and Hitler, if he never succeeded in his mam objective,
was remarkably successful for a time in weakening the opposition of
Great Britain to the realization of his aims. The pohcy of appeasement
is not to be understood unless it is reahzed that it represented the
e acceptance by the British Government, at least in part, of Hitler’s view
of what British policy should be.

The speech of 21 May had been intended to influence opinion in Great
Britain in Hitler’s favour. The quickness of the Bntish reaction was
surprising. During his visit to Berlin in March Sir John Simon had been
sufiiciently impressed by a hint thrown out by the Fuehrer to suggest
that German representatives should come to London to discuss the
possibility of a naval agreement between the two countries. Hitler must
have been delighted to see the speed with which the British Foreign
Minister responded to his bait, and in his speech of 21 May he again
underhned his willingness to arrive at such an understanding. Even
Hitler, however, can scarcely have calculated that the British Govern-
ment would be so maladroit as to say nothing of their intentions to the
Powers with whom they had been so closely associated in censuring
’ Mein Kampf, page 128.

308

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

Germany’s repudiation of the Versailles disarmament clauses in the
previous weeks.

Early in June Ribbentrop, whom Hitler now began to use for special
missions, flew to London. Despite the brusque and tactless way in which
he refused to permit discussion of the Fuehrer’s offer, he returned with
the British signature of a naval pact. This bound the Germans not to
build beyond thirty-five per cent of Britain’s naval strength, but it
tacitly recognized Germany’s nght to begin naval rearmament and
specifically agreed by an escape-clause that, in the construction of
U-boats, Germany should have the right to build up to one hundred
per cent of the submarine strength of the British Commonwealth. The
affront to Britain’s partners, France and Italy, both of whom were also
naval powers, but neither of whom had been consulted, was open and
much resented. The solidarity of the Stresa Front, the unanimity of the
Powers’ condemnation of German rearmament was destroyed. The
British Government, in its eagerness to secure a private advantage, had
given a disastrous impression of bad faith. Like Poland, but without
the excuse of Poland’s difficult position between Germany and Russia,
Great Britain had accepted Hitler’s carefully calculated offer without a
thought of its ultimate consequences.

In September the Fuehrer attended the Party’s rally at Nuremberg.
For the first time detachments of the new German Army took part in
the parade and Hitler glorified the German mihtary tradition : “in war
the nation’s great defiance, in peace the splendid school of our people.
It is the Army which has made men of us all, and when we looked upon
the Army our faith m the future of our people was always reinforced.
This old glorious Army is not dead; it only slept, and now it has arisen
again in you ’’^

Hitler’s speeches throughout the rally were marked by the confidence
of a man sure of his hold over the people he led. The Reichstag was
summoned to Nuremberg for a special session, and Hiller presented
for its unanimous approval the Nuremberg Laws directed against the
Jews, the first depriving Germans of Jewish blood of their citizenship,
the second— the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German
Honour — forbidding marriages between Germans and Jews and the
employment of German servants by Jews. These laws. Hitler declared,
“repay the debt of gratitude to the movement under whose symbol
(the Swastika, now adopted as the national emblem) Germany has
recovered her freedom.’’®

^ Speech on 16 September, 1935; Baynes: voi. I, page 561.

* Speech of 15 September, 1935; ibid., page 732.

309

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

The same month, while Hitler at Nuremberg was making use of the
power he held in Germany to gratify his hatred of the Jews, a quarrel
began at Geneva which was to provide him with the opportunity to
extend his power outside the German frontiers of 1914.

The alliance with Mussolini’s Italy to which Hitler already looked
at the time he wrote Mein Kamp/hz-d hitherto been prevented by Musso-
lini’s Danubian ambitions, and the Duce’s self-appointed role as the
patron of Austrian independence. After the murder of Dolfuss, Musso-
lini had been outspoken in his dislike and contempt for the “barbarians”
north of the Alps, and he had co-operated with the other Powers in
their condemnation of Germany’s unilateral decision to rearm. Musso-
lini, however, had long been contemplating a showy success for his
regime in Abyssinia. It may be that he was prompted by uneasy fears
that his chances of expansion in Europe would soon be reduced by the
growth of German power; it may be that he was stimulated by a sense
of rivalry with the German dictator; it is almost certain that he hoped
to profit by French and British preoccupation with German rearmament
to carry out his adventure on the cheap.

Abyssinia had appealed to the League under Article 15 of the Cove-
nant in March. So far the dispute had been discreetly kept in the back-
ground, but in September the British Government, having just made a
sensational gesture of appeasement to Germany by the Naval Treaty
of June, astonished the world for the second time by taking the lead
at Geneva in demanding the imposition of sanctions against Italy.
She supported this by reinforcing the British Fleet in the Mediterranean.
To the French, who judged that Germany, not Italy, was the greater
danger to the security of Europe, the British appeared to be standing
on their heads and looking at events upside down.

There was only one assumption on which British policy could be
defended. If the British were prepared to support sanctions against
Italy to the point of war, thereby giving to the authority of the League
the backing of force which it had hitherto lacked, their action nught
indeed so strengthen the machinery of collective security as to put a
check to any aggression, whether by Italy or Germany. The outbreak
of hostilities between Italy and Abyssinia in October soon put the
British intentions to the test. The course pursued by the Baldwin Govern-
ment made the worst of both worlds. By insisting on the imposition of
sanctions Great Bntain made an enemy of Mussolini and destroyed all
hope of a united front against German aggression. By her refusal to
drive home the policy of sanctions, in face of Mussolini’s bluster, she dealt
the authority of the League as well as her own prestige a fatal blow, and
310

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

destroyed all hope of finaing m collective security an effective alternative
to the united front of the Great Powers against German aggression.

If the British Government never meant to do more than make a
show of imposing sanctions it would have done better to have followed
the more cynical but more realistic policy of Laval and made a deal
with Italy at the beginning. Even the Hoare-Laval Pact of December.
1935, would have been a better alternative than allowing the farce of
sanctions to drag on to its inconclusive and discreditable end. For the
consequences of these blunders extended much farther than Abyssinia
and the Mediterranean; their ultimate beneficiary was, not Mussolini,
but Hitler.

Germany at first confined herself to a policy of strict neutrality in the
Abyssinian affair, but the advantages to be derived from the quarrel
between Italy and the Western Powers did not escape Hitler. If Italy
lost the war, that would mean the weakening of the piincipal barrier
to German ambitions in Central and South-eastern Europe. On the
other hand, if Italy proved to be successful, the prospects for Hitler
were still good. His one fear was that the quarrel might be patched up
by some such compromise as the Hoare-Laval Pact, and when the
Polish Ambassador in Berlin saw him two days after the announcement
of the terms of the Hoare-Laval Agreement he found him highly
excited and alarmed at this prospect.^ The further development of the
dispute, however, only gave him greater cause for satisfaction. Not only
was Italy driven into a position of isolation, in which Mussolini was
bound to look more favourably on German offers of support, but the
League of Nations suffered further blows to its authority from which,
after its previous failure to halt Japanese aggression, it never recovered.
French confidence in England was further shaken, and the belief that
Great Britain was a spent force in international politics received the
most damning confirmation.

The events of 1935 thus provided an unexpected opportunity for Hitler
to realize his Italian plans: as Mussolini later acknowledged, it was in
the autumn of 1935 that the idea of the Rome-Berlin Axis was born.
No less important was the encouragement which the feebleness of the
opposition to aggression gave Hitler to pursue his policy without regard
to the risks. “There was now, as it turned out,” writes Mr. Churchill,
“little hope of averting war or of postponing it by a trial of strength
equivalent to war. Almost all that remained open to France and Britain
was to await the moment of the challenge and do the best they could.”"®

* Elizabeth Wiskemann: The Rome-Beilm Axis (Oxford, 1949), pages 51-2.

“Winston S. Churchill: The Second Wot Id War, vol. I, The Gathering Storm
(London, 1948), page 148.

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Throughout the autumn and winter of 1935-1936 Hitler watched
and waited. By March, 1936, he judged the moment opportune for
another coup in foreign policy. There had been ample warning of where
his next move would be. In his speech of 21 May, 1935, he had put for-
ward the view that the alliance concluded between France and Russia
“brought an element of legal insecurity into the Locarno Pact,” with
the obhgations of which, he argued, it was incompatible. The German
Foreign Office repeated this in a note to the French Government, and,
although their view was rejected by both the French and the other
signatories of the Locarno Pact, Hitler refused to give up his grievance.
After an interview with Hitler on 21 November the French Ambassador.
M. FranQois-Poncet, reported to Paris that Hitler had made up his
mind to use the pretext of the Franco-Soviet treaty to denounce Locarnc
and reoccupy the deimhtanzed zone of the Rhineland. Me was onl>
waiting for an appropriate moment to act.

The treaty between France and Russia had still not been ratified. Il
had become a subject of bitter controversy in French politics, and evei
since the beginning of July, 1935, the French Right-wing Press and
parties had been conducting a campaign against it. This had httle tc
do with foreign affairs; it was an extension of the class and party con-
flicts inside France to her external policy. Hitler was thus deliberate!}
choosing as his pretext an issue which divided France; nor was he ignor
ant of the fact that in London, too, there was no enthusiasm for France’s
latest commitment.

On 11 February, 1936, the Franco-Soviet treaty finally came before
the French Chamber of Deputies, and on the 27th it was ratified b}
353 votes to 164. The French Government seems to have been nervous
about the reception of the news in Berlin. When, on the morning afte
the ratification, Paris-Midi published a delayed interview with Hitler
in which he spoke in friendly terms of his desire for an agreement witl
France, the French Ambassador was instructed to ask the Fuehre
how he conceived this rapprochement could be achieved. But whei
Fran?ois-Poncet saw Hitler on 2 March his reception was far fron
friendly. Hitler declared angrily that he had been made a fool of, tha
the interview with Pans-Midi had been given on 21 February and de
liberately held up in Paris until after the ratification of the Treaty
He was, however, still willing to answer the French Government’

312

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

inquiry and he promised the Ambassador detailed proposals in the near
future.

Hitler’s reply, as Franqois-Poncct had foreseen, was to march German
troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. It was a proposal which
thoroughly alarmed his generals. German rearmament was still far
from complete and the first conscripts had only been taken into the
Army a few months before. France, together with her Polish and Czech
allies, could immediately mobilize ninety divisions, with a further hun-
dred in reserve — and this took no account of Russian forces. If the
French and their allies marched, the Germans would be heavily out-
numbered, and it is to be remembered that the reoccupation of the
Rhineland represented not only a breach of the Treaty of Versailles
but a casus foederis under the Locarno Pact. Hitler did not dispute these
facts; he based his decision on the belief that the French would not
march— and he was right. According to General Jodi, the German
occupation forces which moved into the Rhineland consisted of approxi-
mately one division,’- and only three battalions moved across the Rhine,
to Aachen, Trier and Saarbriicken. The General Staff, worried by the
first reports from Paris and London, wanted to move these three battal-
ions back aaoss the Rhine, and General Beck, the Chief of Staff,
suggested that Germany should undertake not to build fortifications
west of the Rhine.^ Hiller turned down both proposals without a
moment’s hesitation. The German generals could not believe that the
French would not march this time, but Hitler remained confident in
his diagnosis of the state of pubhc opinion in France and Great Britain.

Blomberg’s directive for the operation was issued on 2 March, the
day on which Hitler saw Frangois-Poncet.-’ On the morning of 7 March,
as the German soldiers were marching into the Rhineland, greeted with
flowers flung by wildly enthusiastic crowds, Neurath, German Foreign
Minister, summoned the British, French and Italian Ambassadors
to the Wilhclmstrasse and presented them with a document which con-
tained, in addition to Germany’s grounds for denouncing the Locarno
Pact (the incompatibility of its obligations with the Franco-Soviet
treaty), new and far-reaching peace proposals. As M. Framjois-Poncet,
the French Ambassador, described it, “Hitler struck his adversary in
the face, and as he did so declared: ‘I bring you proposals for peace !’

In place of the discarded Locarno Treaty, Hitler offered a pact of non-

* Mr. Churchill (op. at., vol. I, page 150) puts the forces a good deal higher, at
thirty-five thousand

* Examination of General Jodi. N.P., part XV, pages 320-1.

® Text of the Directive. N D , C-159.

* A. Francois-Poncet, page 193.

313

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

aggression to France and Belgium, valid for twenty-five years and
supplemented by the air pact to which Britain attached so much impor-
tance. The whole agreement was to be guaranteed by Great Britain
and Italy, with Holland included if she so wished. A new demilitarized
zone was to be drawn on both sides of the western frontier, treating
France and Germany on terms of equality, while in the east Germany
offered non-aggression pacts to her neighbours on the model of the
agreement she had concluded with Poland. Finally, now that equality
of rights had been restored, Germany was prepared to re-enter the
League of Nations and to discuss the colonial problem and the reform
of the League Covenant.

At noon Hitler addressed the Reichstag. His speech v/as another
masterpiece of reasonableness.

You know, fellow-members of the Reichstag, how hard was the road that I
have had to travel since 30 January, 1933, m order to free the German people
from the dishonourable position in which it found itself and to secure
equality of lights, without thereby alienating Germany from the political
and economic commonwealth of European nations, and particularly with-
out creating new ill-feeling from the aftermath of old enmities. ... At no
moment of my struggle on behalf of the German people have I ever forgotten
the duty incumbent on me and on us all firmly to uphold European culture
and European civilization. . . .

Why should it not be possible to put an end to this useless strife (between
Fiance and Germany) which has lasted for centuries and which has never
oeen and never v/ill be finally decided by either of the two nations con-
cerned? Why not replace it by the rule of reason? The German people have
no interest in seeing the French people suffer. And what advantage can corns
to Fiance when Germany is m misery? . . . Why should it not be possible to
lift the general problem of conflicting interests between the European states
above the sphere of passion and unreason and consider it m the calm light
of a higher vision?

It was France, Hitler declared, who had betrayed Europe by her
alliance with the Asiatic power of Bolshevism, pledged to destroy all
the values of European civilization— just as it was France who, by the
same action, had invalidated the Locarno Pact. Once again, reluctantly
but without flinching, he must bow to the inevitable and take the neces-
sary steps to defend Germany’s national interests. He ended with the
sacred vow to work now more than ever to further the cause of mut ual
understanding between the nations of Europe, but the roar of en-
thusiasm with which the packed Reichstag welcomed the announcement
of the reoccupation of the Rliineland belied the words of peace.^ As
' Text in Baynes: vol. II, pages 1,271-93.

314

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933 1937

Hitler had told Rauschning: “My Party comrades mil not fail to under-
stand me when they hear me speak of universal peace, disarmament
and mutual security pacts It was the assertion of German power,
not the offer of peace, that brought the Reichstag to its feet, stamping
and shouting in their delight.

Hitler later admitted: “The forty-eight hours after the march into
the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French
had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw
with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal
would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.”
Events, however, followed exactly the same pattern as the year before
Tliere were anxious consultations between Paris and London; appeals
for reason and calm— after all, people said, the Rhineland is part of
Germany; much talk of the new opportunities for peace offered by
Hitler’s proposals— “A Chance to Rebuild” was the title of The Times
leading article. The Locarno Powers conferred; the Council of the
League conferred; the International Court at The Hague was ready to
confer, if Hitler would agree to submit his argument that the Franco-
Soviet Treaty and the Locarno Pact were incompatible. Germany's
action was again solemnly condemned and the censure again rejected
by Hitler. But no one marched— except the Germans; no one spoke
openly of sanctions or of enforcing the Locarno Treaty. The Polish
Government, believing that France could never tolerate the German
action in the Rhineland, suddenly offered, on 9 March, to bring their
military alliance with France into operation; when they found that
France was not going to move, the Poles had some embarrassment in
explaining away their gesture, wliich had become known in Berlin.

Meanwhile Hitler dissolved the Reichstag and invited the German
people to pass judgment on his policy. He came before them as the
Peacemaker. “All of us and all peoples,” he said at Breslau, “have the
feeling tliat we are at the turning-point of an age. . . . Not we alone,
the conquered of yesterday, but also the victors have the inner convic-
tion that something was not as it should be, that reason seemed to have

deserted men Peoples must find a new relation to each other, some

new form must be created But over this new order which must be

set up stand the words: Reason and Logic, Understanding and Mutual
Consideration. They make a mistake who think that over the entrance
to this new order there can stand the word ‘Versailles.’ That would be,
not the foundation stone of the new order, but its gravestone.”'*

I See above, page 296. “ Paul Schmidt, page 320.

> Speech of 22 March, 1936; Baynes: vol. II, pages 1,313-5.

315

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

When the election was held on 29 March the results were announced
as:

Total of qualified voters . .
Total of votes cast
Votes cast against or invalid
Votes cast for the list

45,453,691

45,001,489 (99 per cent)
540,211

44,461,278 (98-8 per cent).

If the election figures showed a suspicious unanimity, there can be little
doubt that a substantial majority of the German people approved
Hitler’s action, or that it raised the Fuelirer to a new peak of popularity
in Germany.

No event marks a clearer stage in the success of Hitler’s diplomatic
game than the reoccupation of the Rhineland. The demilitarized Rhine-
land was all that was left to France of the guarantees against a renewed
German attack which she had sought to obtain after 1918. She had
still a clear military superiority over the German Army; the terms of
the Locarno Pact specifically recognized the German action as a casus
foederis; ample warning had been given by the French Ambassador
in Berlin. The French could certainly expect little support from the
Baldwin Government in London, but to allow Hitler’s action to pass
unchallenged was tantamount to confessing that France was no longer
prepared to defend the elaborate security system she had built up since
1918. This was a pohtical fact which was bound to have major con-
sequences in Central and Eastern Europe, and its effect was enhanced
by the change which the reoccupation of the Rhineland brought in
the strategic map of Europe. For the Germans at once began to build
a powerful line of fortifications in the west which greatly reduced the
value of the French alliances with Poland, with Russia and the Little
Entente, by placing a formidable barrier in the way of a French Army
advancing to the help of France’s allies and by releasing larger German
forces for operations elsewhere When Wilham Bullitt, the American
Ambassador in Pans, called on the German Foreign Minister in May,
he reported:

Neurath said that it was the policy of the German Government to do
nothing active in foreign affairs until the Rhineland had been digested. He
explained that he meant that until the German fortifications had been
constructed on the French and Belgian frontiers, the German Government
would do everything possible to prevent rather than encourage an outbreak
by the Nazis in Austria and would pursue a quiet line with regard to Czecho-
slovakia. “As soon as our fortifications are constructed and the countries of
Central Europe realize that France cannot enter German territory at will,
316

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

all those countries will begin to feel very differently about their foreign
politics and a new constellation will develop,” he said.^

While the Western Powers continued a futile exchange of notes vrith
Berlin, the other European governments began to accommodate them-
selves to the new balance of power.

No government was more uneasily conscious of the meaning of these
events than the Austrian. The premise upon which Austrian indepen-
dence was based, the unity of Italy, France and Great Britain in face
of Germany, and their superiority over Germany in power, was being
destroyed. Sooner or later Mussolini would be bound to draw nearer
to Germany; sooner or later the 1934 guarantee of Italian divisions on
the Brenner frontier would be withdrawn.

In a letter to Hitler, dated 18 October, 1935, Papen, now German
Minister in Vienna, wrote: “We can confidently leave further develop-
ments to sort themselves out in the near future. I am convinced that
the shifting of Powers on the European chess-board will permit us in
the not too distant future to take up actively the question of influencing
the south-eastern area.”^ In 1936 Papen, whose aim was to undermine
Austrian independence from within and to bring about the Anschluss
peacefully, gained his first successes. On 13 May, Prince Starhemberg,
the Austrian Vice-Chancellor and an outspoken opponent of the
Austrian Nazis, was forced to resign. Starhemberg was a particular
friend of Mussolini, but the Duce was content simply to intercede
for his personal safety. According to one well-informed Austrian,
Guido Zernatto, it was actually from Mussolini that Schuschnigg, the
Austrian Chancellor, received the hint to get rid of Starhemberg in
order to placate Hitler.

Already in the spring of 1936, when he visited Rome, Starhemberg
had found the Duce preoccupied with the threat of German power and
with the way in which his own quarrel with Britain and France was
working to Hitler’s advantage. When, three weeks after Starhemberg
had gone, the Austrian Chancellor, Schuschnigg, informed Mussolini
that the Austrian Government was about to sign an agreement with
Germany, the Duce, though repeating his assurances of support for
Austrian independence, gave his approval.

* Memorandum by Wm. Bullitt of a conversation with von Neurath on 18 May,
1936; N.D. L-150.

Won Papen to Hitler, 18 October, 1935; N.D. D-692.

317

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

The Austro-German Agreement of 11 July, 1936, was designed on
the surface to ease and improve relations between the two countries.
The three pubhshed clauses reafihrmed Hitler’s recognition of Austria’s
full sovereignty; promised non-intervention in each other’s internal
affairs; and agreed that, although Austria would “maintain a foreign
policy based always on the principle that Austria acknowledges herself
to be a German Slate,” this should not affect her special relationship
with Italy and Hungary established by the Rome Protocols of 1934.
The secret clauses covered a relaxation of the Press war between the
two countries, an amnesty for political prisoners in Austria, measures
for dealing with the Austrian Nazi refugees in Germany, resumption
of normal economic relations and German removal of the restrictions
on tourist traffic between the two States. Most important of all, the Aus-
trian Government agreed to give representatives of the so-called
National Opposition in Austria, “respectable” crypto-Nazis like Glaise-
Horstenau and later Scyss-Inquart, a share in political responsibility.^

Ostensibly, Austro-German relations were now placed on a level
satisfactory to both sides. But, in fact, for the next eighteen months
the Germans used the Agreement as a lever with which to exert in-
creasing pressure on the Austrian Government and to extort further
concessions, a process of whittling down Austrian independence which
culminated in the famous interview between Hitler and Schuschnigg
in February, 1938. The Agreement, as it was exploited by the Germans,
thus marked a big step forward in that policy of capturing Austria by
peaceful methods to which Hitler resorted after the failure of the
putsch in July, 1934.

The importance of the Agreement was not limited to the relations
between Austria and Germany. Its signature materially improved
Hitler’s prospects of a rapprochement with Italy. Here again he had
extraordinary luck. On 4 July, 1936, the League Powers tacitly admitted
defeat and withdrew the sanctions they had tried to impose on Italy.
Less than a fortnight later, on 17 July, civil war broke out in Spain
and created a situation from which Hitler was able to draw even greater
advantages than from Mussolini’s Abyssinian adventure.

Hitler was at Bayreuth when a German business man from Morocco
and the local Nazi leader there arrived with a personal letter from
General Franco. After Hitler’s return from the theatre he sent for Goer-
ing and his War Minister, Blomberg. That night he decided to give active

^ Text in Documents on German Foreign Policy: From the Archives of the German
Foreign Ministry (hereafter referred to as G.D.), Senes D, vol. I (London, 1949),
No. 152.

318

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

help to Franco. In the course of the next three year', Oerniaay sent
men and military supplies, including experts and technicians of all
kinds and the famous Condor Air Legion. German aid to Franco was
never on a major scale, never sufficient to win the war for him or even
to equal the forces sent by Mussolini, which in March, 1937, reached
the figure of sixty to seventy thousand men.* In April, 1959, an oHiciai
of the German Economic Policy Department, trying to reckon what
Germany had spent on help to Franco up to that date, gave a round
figure of five hundred million Reichsmarks,® not a large sum by com-
parison with the amounts spent on rearmament. But the advantages
Germany secured in return were disproportionate — economic advan-
tages (valuable sources of raw materials in Spanish mines); useful
experience in training her airmen and testing equipment such as tanks
in battle conditions; above all, strategic and political advantages.

It only needed a glance at the map to show how seriously France’s
position was affected by events across the Pyicnees. A victor) for Franco
would mean a third Fascist State on her frontiers, three instead of two
frontiers to be guarded in the event of war. France, for geographical
reasons alone, was more deeply interested in what happened in Spain
than any other of the Great Powers, yet the ideological character of
the Spanish Civil War divided, instead of uniting, French opinion.
The French elections shortly before the outbreak of the troubles in
Spain had produced the Left-wing Popular Front Government of
Leon Blum. So bitter had class and political conflicts grown in France
that — as in the case of the Franco-Soviet Treaty — foreign affairs were
again subordinated to internal faction, and many Frenchmen were
prepared to support Franco as a way of hitting at their own Govern-
ment. The Spanish Civil War exacerbated all those factors of disunity
in France upon which Hitler had always hoped to play, and so long as
the Civil War lasted French foreign policy was bound to be weakened.

From the first Mussolini intervened openly in Spain, giving all the
aid he could spare to bring about a victory for Franco. Thus at the
very moment when the withdrawal of sanctions might have made it
possible for the Western Powers to establish better relations with Italy,
the Spanish War and the continual clash between Italian intervention
and British and French attempts to enforce non-intervention kept the
quarrel between them alive. As von Hassell, the German Ambassador
in Rome, pointed out: “The role played by the Spanish conflict as

‘ Figure given by Grandi to the German Chaigc d’AlTaires m London in Februaij,
1938; G.D., Scries D, vol. Ill (London, 1951), No. 519.

‘ Ibid., No. 783.

319

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

regards Italy’s relations with France and England could be similar
to that of the Abyssinian conflict, bringing out clearly the opposing
interests of the Powers and thus preventing Italy from being drawn into
the net of the Western Powers. . . . The struggle for dominant pohtical
influence in Spain lays bare the natural opposition between Italy and
France; at the same time the position of Italy as a power in the Western
Mediterranean comes into competition with that of Britain.”^

As the published diplomatic documents now make clear, the quarrel
over Spain, added to the legacy of suspicion from the episode of sanc-
tions, wrecked all the efforts of London and Pans to draw Mussolini
closer to their side in the years between 1936 and 1939. Indeed, the
common policy of Italy and Germany towards Spain created one of
the main foundations on which the Rome-Berlin Axis was built, and
the Spanish Civil War provided much greater scope for such co-opera-
tion than the Abyssinian War from which Germany had held aloof.

In September, 1936, Hitler judged circumstances favourable for
creating a closer relationship between Germany and Italy in order to
exploit a situation in which the two countries had begun to follow
parallel courses. In the year that had passed since the outbreak of the
Abyssinian War events had produced great changes in the relations of
the Great Powers. Hitherto Hitler had been content to watch; now the
time had come to make use of the advantages these changes ofiered
him. The July Agreement between Germany and Austria removed the
biggest obstacle to an understanding between Rome and Berlin, and
on 29 June the German Ambassador conveyed to Ciano, the Itahan
Foreign Minister, an offer from Hitler to consider the recognition of
the new Italian Empire — a point on which the Duce was notoriously
touchy — whenever Mussolini wished. In September Hitler sent Hans
Frank, his Minister of Justice, who happened to speak Italian fluently,
on an exploratory mission to Rome.

Frank saw Mussolini m the Palazzo Venezia on 23 September. He
brought a cordial invitation from the Fuehrer for both Mussolini and
Ciano to visit Germany. In Spain, he said, Germany was assisting the
Nationalists from motives of ideological solidarity, but she had neither
interests nor aims of her own in the Mediterranean. “The Fuehrer is
anxious,” Ciano noted, “that we should know that he regards the
Mediterranean as a purely Italian sea. Italy has a right to positions of
privilege and control in the Mediterranean. The interests of the Germans

^ Dispatch from von Hassell to the German Foreign Mimstry, 18 December, 1936;
G.D , Senes D, vol. Ill, No. 157.

320

IHL COUNlhRII'I'l Ph\!J, 19.U-i';37

arc turned towards the BulUc, which is their Mcdilern'ai'i!i.” !ii Cier*
many, Frank declared, the Austrian question was now cuii sdered to
have been settled, and after suggesting a co'tiiiion poi'c> m presenting
their colonial deraand^, and renewing the olTer to reeogni/,e the Italian
Empire, Frank concluded by expressing Hitler's belief in the need for
increasingly close collaboration between Gcrnuiny and Ualyd Tliiough-
out the inteiwiew Mussolini was cuiefui not to be toi^ forthcoming and
affected a certain disinterestedness, but a month later Ciano set out
for Germany.

After a talk with the German Foreign Minister, Neur.nh, in Berlin
on 21 October, Ciano visited Hitler himself at Bcrchtesgaden on the
24th. Hiller laid himself out to be drinning an i was greatly touched
by the cordial greetings from '‘the leading staicsman in the world, to
whom none may even remotely compare iamsclf." Twice lie lelcphuiit'd
to Munich to make sure of the details of Ciano’s teceptiun, and altliuagi;
he monopolized the conversation he was obviousty at pains to impress
Ciano with his friendliness

The gist of Hitler’s remarks was the need for lialy and (ierraany to
create a common front against Bolshevism and agaiusl the Western
Pow'ers. The possibilities of Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Japan
were passed in rapid review. Towards England Hitler still showed un-
certainty If England faced the formation of a strong German- Italian
bloc, she might well seek to come to terms with it. If she still continued
to work against them, then Germany and Italy would have the power
to defeat her.

German and Italian learmamenl [Haler dccluicd] is proceedmi; much more
rapidly than rcaimamcnt can in Great BriU'in. wheie it i-, not only a case of •
producing ship;,, guns and aeroplanes, but ul ,0 of undei udvng psychological
rcaimamcnt, which is much longer and more difficuil. in ihice years
Geimany will be leady, in foui yeais mom than leaJy, if live ycais arc

given, bettci still According to the Enghsh there are iwo countries in the

world today which aided by ad venture! s. Gcimany and Ualy. But Fagkmd
too, was led by adventurers when she built hei Einpiic. Today she is
governed meicly by incompeients.-

A protocol had been prepared by the Italian and German Foicigu
Offices before Ciano’s visit, and was signed by the two Foreign Ministers
in Berlin. It coveied in some detail German-Italian co-operation on a
number of issues — the proposals for a new Locarno Pact, policy towards
the League; Spain; Austria; the Danubian States (the Germans were

* Ciano’s Minutes in Ciano’s Diplomatic Fapets, edited by Malcolm Muggeiidge
(London, 19481, pages 4J-8.

* Ciano’s Minutes, ibid., pages 56-60.

L.H. — L

321

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

eager to bring Yugoslavia and Italy closer together); Abyssinia, and
the recognition of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Nothing
was said of this document (known as the October Protocols) in the
communique issued at the end of Ciano’s visit, but when Mussolini
went to Milan on 1 November, 1936, he spoke of an agreement between
the two countries and for the first time used the famous simile of an
axis, “round which all those European states which are animated by
a desire for collaboration and peace may work together.”

VII

By the end of 1936 Hitler had succeeded in estabhshing one of the two
alhances on which he had counted in Mein Kampf, for the initiative
in forging the Axis unquestionably came from Hitler, who exploited
with great skill the situation in which Mussohni was placed But the
second alliance, that with Britain, still eluded him.

In August Hitler had determined on a new approach to London,
and appointed Ribbentrop as the German Ambassador to the Court of
St. James. Ribbentrop was four years younger than the Fuehrer, whom
he slavishly admired and copied, had served in the First World War
and had later become a business man dealing in wines. In 1920 he
married Anna Henkel, the daughter of a big champagne dealer, and
after, as before, the war spent a good deal of time travelling abroad.
He joined the Party in the early 1930s, when Hitler had already become
prominent as a political leader, and it was at his villa in Dahlem that the
decisive conversation leading to the formation of the coalition govern-
ment had taken place on 22 January, 1933 An ambitious man, Ribben-
trop succeeded in persuading the new Chancellor that he could provide
him with more reliable information about what was happening abroad
than reached him through the official channels of the Foreign Office.
With Party funds he set up a Ribbentrop Bureau on the Wilhelmstrasse,
facing the Foreign Office; it was staffed by journahsts, business men
out of a job, and by those members of the Party who were eager for a
diplomatic career. After serving as Special Commissioner for Dis-
armament in 1934, Ribbentrop’s big chance came in 1935, when he
succeeded in negotiating the Anglo-German Naval Treaty behind the
back of the German Foreign Office, and made his reputation.

Arrogant, vain, humourless and spiteful, Ribbentrop was one of the
worst choices Hiller ever made for high office But he shared many of
Hitler’s own social resentments (especially against the regular Foreign

322

IHL COUMLRFtIT Pt^iCt, 1933-1937

Service), he was prepared to prostrate himself before the Fuehrer’s
genius, and his appointment enabled Hitler to take the conduct of
relations with Great Britain much more closely into his own hands.
Ribbentrop’s ambition was to replace Neurath as Foreign Minister,
and he accepted the London post with a bad grace, believing with some
justification that Neurath was trying to get him out of the way. None
the less, further success along the lines of the Anglo-German Nava!
Treaty would be a big feather in his cap, and both Ribbentrop and
Hitler had considerable hopes of the new appointment.

What puzzled Hitler and Ribbentrop was the fact that although
the British were disinclined to lake any forceful action on the Continent
and only too prepared to put off awkward decisions, they found them
wary of committing themselves to co-operate with Germany. At the
time of Ciano’s visit Hitler was still in two minds about the British: he
was reluctant to take open action which would alienate them, in the
hope that he might still win them over, yet he was templed at times to
regard Britain as “finished” and her value either a.s an ally or an
opponent as negligible. This alternation of moods persisted in varying
degree until the war, and never wholly disappeaied from Hitler’s
ambivalent attitude towards Britain.

Hitler’s best argument with the Conservative Government in Britain,
an argument which commanded attention not only in London, but in
many other capitals, was one which he used more frequently after the
outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; the common interest of the Euio-
pean States in face of Communism. Hitler had been talking of Ger-
many as a “bulwark against Bolshevism” since 1919. But the Spanish •
Civil War sharpened the sense of ideological conluct in Western Europe.
This was the cia of Popular Fronts, attempts to unite all “progressive”
parties and oiganizations in common opposition to Fascism; it was
also the period m which the extremists of the French Right coined the
slogan, “Belter Hitler than Blum.” Many people in England as well as
in France, who would have looked askance at a blatant German
nationalism, were impressed by Hitler’s anti-Communism; it served
the same purpose as Russia’s own peace campaign and similar moves
after the Second World War. Again and again Hitler used the example
of Spain as a land ravaged by Bolshevism, and pointed to the Popular
Front Government in France as the equivalent of the Girondins who
were replaced by the more extreme Jacobins, or of Kerensky’s Pro-
visional Government in Russia swept away by the Bolsheviks in the
second October Revolution of 1917. “Perhaps the time is comiAg more

323

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

quickly than we think,” he declared in November, 1936, “when the
rest of Europe will see in our Germany the strongest safeguard of a
truly European, a truly human, culture and civilization. Perhaps the
time IS coming moie quickly than we think when the rest of Europe
will no longer regard with resentment the founding of a National
Socialist German Reich, but will rejoice that this dam was raised against
the Bolshevik flood. . .

Anti-Communism could also be used to provide the basis for the
power-bloc of which Hitler had spoken to Ciano. For months Ribben-
trop had been working — quite independently of the German Foreign
Office — to reach agreement with Japan. In November he succeeded,
and flew to Berlin from London for the signature of the Anti-Comintern
Pact. The ideological objectives of the pact— the defeat of the Commun-
ist “world-conspiracy” — gave it a umversal character which a straight-
forward agreement aimed against Russia could not have had. It was
expressly designed to secure the adherence of other States, and it was
not long before Hitler began to collect new signatories. The public
provisions of the pact dealt with no more than the exchange of informa-
tion on Comintern activity, co-operation in preventive measures, and
severity m deahng with Comintern agents. There was also a secret
Protocol which dealt specifically with Russia and bound both parties
to sign no political treaties with the U.S S.R. In the event of an unpro-
voked attack or threat of attack by Russia on either Power, the Pro-
tocol added, each agreed to “take no measures which would tend to
ease the situation of the U S S R This was still vague, but the state-
ment made by Ribbenlrop on the day the treaty was signed left httle
«• doubt that Germany hoped to make more of this new pohtical grouping.
“Japan,” Ribbentrop declared, “will never permit any dissemination
of Bolshevism in the Far East. Germany is creating a bulwark against
this pestilence in Central Europe. Finally, Italy, as the Duce informs
the world, will hoist the anti-Bolshevist banner in the south.”'^ In
Hitler’s eyes the October Protocols signed with Italy, and the Anti-
Coimntern Pact concluded with Japan, were to become the foundations
of a new military alhance.

From every point of view, therefore, Huler could feel satisfaction
with his fourth year of power. The remilitarization of the Rhineland,
Germany’s massive rearmament, and the contrast between his own
self-confident leadership and the weakness of the Western Powers, had

^ Speech at Munich, 9 November, 1936; Baynes, vol. II, pages 1,331-2.

2 G D., Series D, vol. 1, No 734.

“ Documents on International AJfaiis, 1936 (London, 1937), pages 299-300.

324

THf: CO! \-TCRFL!T PI Af E, tV33-iy37

greatly increased his presti'ie both abroad and at i’oine. Di iinguishe i
visitors were eager to meet him - am'itig them Ge iryc, who left
the unfortunate impression of coni.inmg fid.er la hi-, ivlid' that if
Germany had only held out in lyUl she would liu'c won ihe war.
Most of those who went to stare returned hair-conviin.:(l h\ ihe claims
of Europe's new Man of Destiny, and swept aw ly by their impressiou..
of the dynamic new (iciinany he iiad called into being. When the
Olympic Games were held in Berlii m \ugust, 1936, thousands of
foreigners crowded the capital, and the opporiunii) was used with
great skill to put the Third Reich on show. Germany’s new masteis
entertained with a splendour that rivalled tlie displu 3 s of le Roi Snkil
and the Tsars of Russia. ‘\t N'ircmherg, m September, the Part) Rall^,
w’hich lasted a week, was on a scale which esen Na/i pascaalry had
never before equalled.

Hitler rounded off his first four >ea's of ollice by a long 'pcvch tn
the Reichstag on 30 Janiii:>, 1937. in whic!' he forniallv wituuiew
Germany’s signature from those clauses ol the Treaty of Versatile,
which had denied her equality of rights and laid on hci the respon-
sibility for the war “Today,” Haler added, “! must humbly thank
Providence, wliose grace has enabled me, once an unknown soldie-
m the war, to bring to a successful issue the struggle for our honoiii
and rights as a nation.”'

It was an impressive lecurd to which Hiller was able to point, not
only in the raising of German prestige abro.sd, but in economic improve-
ment and the recovery of naSional confueiice at hoii'c. It is pointles-,
to deny that Hiller succeeded in rele.iuc'j in the Gerinvi ps'pl., a gre i;
store of enc'gy and faith in Ihems.-Kes ,,\i „-h laid been l:ustral:d
during the years of the Depression. The (i,.,rmuns respenued to the lead
of an aulhoritarian governmeat which was not afraid to take both risk ,
and lesponsibilily. Thus, to quote only one instance, belween January.
1933, and December, 1934, the number ofregidered uneraploved fell
from six millions to two raiilion su himdicd thousand, while the
number of insured workers employed rose from eleven and a half to
fourteen and a half millions. Granted that some measure ol' economic
recovery was general at this time, none the less in Germany it was
more rapid and went further than elsewhere, largely as a result of heavy
Government expenditure on improving the rcoiirces of the country
and on public w-orks.

* Speech ol -'.0 Jciniiai), 1937; Bajnes; \ol. H, pa.-s 1,33 1 -17

^Figi.u's quoted from C W riuillehauJ, I'lw Uonomic Ri’nniiy <■/ Gciiiuiin,
J933-193S {London, t939), page 46

325

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

It IS natural, therefore, to ask, as many Germans still ask, whether
there was not some point up to which the Nazi movement was a force
for good, but after which its original idealism became corrupted.
Whatever truth there may be in this so far as it is a question of the rank
and file of the movement, so far as Hitler and the Nazi leadership are
concerned, this is a view contradicted by the evidence. For all the
evidence points to the opposite view, namely, that from the first Hitler
and the other Nazi leaders thought in terms solely of power, their own
power, and the power of the nation over which they ruled.

In a secret memorandum of 3 May, 1935, Dr. Schacht, the man who
had the greatest responsibility for Germany’s economic recovery,
wrote: “The accomplishment of the armament programme with speed
and in quantity is the problem of German politics and everything else
should be subordinated to this purpose, as long as the main purpose is
not imperilled by neglecting all other questions.”^ This view is repeated
again and again through all the discussions on economic policy in
these years. The basis of Schacht’s later opposition to Hitler’s policy,
which came to a head in 1937 and led to his resignation, was Hitler’s
persistent refusal to take into account any other economic or social
objective-even the most elementary precautions for avoiding inflation
and State bankruptcy — besides the overriding need to provide him with
the most eflicient military machine possible in the shortest possible
time.

In August, 1936, the period of conscription was extended to two
years, while at Nuremberg in September, impatient with the difficulties
laised by the economic experts. Hitler proclaimed a Four-Year Plan and
put Goering in charge fully armed with the poweis to secure results
whatever the cost German economy was henceforward subordinated to
one purpose, preparation for war. It is this fact that explains why,
although Germany made so remarkable an economic recovery, and
by the end of this period was one of the best-equipped industrial
nations in the world, this was reflected, not in the standard of hving
of her people, which was deliberately stabilized at a low level, but in
her growing military strength.

Moreover, it is necessary to add to this, that the biggest single factor
in the recovery of confidence and faith in Germany was the sense of
this power, a renewed confidence and faith m “the German mission,”
expressed in an increasingly aggressive nationalism which had little
use for the rights of other, less powerful nations. The psychology of
Nazism, no less than Nazi economics, was one of preparation for
' Memorandum from Schacht to Hitler, 3 May, 1935; N D. 1168-PS.

326

'SHE col.NriRtHT i>i \ri , 1933-1937

war. Both depended lor their contiiisicd succev, upon the iriaintcnance
of a national spirit and a national efibil which in the end mu^t find
expression in aggressive action War, the belief in Moicnce and the
right of the stronger, were not corruptions of Nazism, the> were its
essence. Anyone who visited Germany in 1936-1937 needed lo be
singularly blind not to see the ends to which all this va.st activity v\as
directed. Recognition of the benefits which Hitler’s rule brought
to Germany in the first four years of his regime needs to be tempered
therefore by the realization that for the Fuehrer— and for a considerable
section of the German people --these were the by-products of Ins true
purpose, the ctcation of an instiumcnt ol povscr with winch to realize
a policy of expansion that in the er.d admitted no hni.ls.

VIII

TitROLiGHOLT 1937 Hitlcr pursued the lines of policy he had established
in the previous year. It w'as a \ear of preparation— and I'f growing
confidence m German stiength. For, although Hitler was still at pains
to protest his love of peace, there vvji u new note of impauence iii
his voice. In his speech of 30 January he dealt at some length with
Germany’s demand for the return of the colonies taken from her at
the end of the war. In the same speech he spoke of "the justified feeling
of national honour existing among Ihose nationalities who are forced
to live as a minority within othei natioro.”' The demand for colonies
was raised with increasing frequency in 1937, and at the end of the year,
speaking in Augsburg, Hiller declared “What the world shuts its ears •
to today it will not be able to ignore m a year’s time. What it will not
listen lo now it vvitl have to think about m three years’ time, and in
five or six it will have to lake nuo practical consideration. We shall
voice our demand for living-room in colonics more and more loudly
till the world cannot but recognize our claim.”-
There were two particular grounds for Hitler’s confidence: the pro-
gress of German rearmament, and the consolidation of the Axis.
Goenng, now the economic dictator of Germany, had as little respect
for economics as Hitler. His methods were crude, but not ineffective.

At a meeting of ministers over which he had presided just before his
appointment as Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, Gotring insisted
that the shortages of raw materials must be overcome and that there

* Text of the speeth in Bavnes. vol II, pages 1,334-47
•^Speech at Augsburg, 21 November, 1937; Ba>ncs: vol. 11, pages 1,370-2.

327

CHANCELLOK, 1933-1939

could be no question of slowing down rearmament. The new plans of
the Fuehrer, he explained, “start from the basic thought that the show-
down with Russia is inevitable. What Russia has done in the field of
reconstruction, we too can do. Just what sort of risk is it that our in-
dustry is afraid of, compared with the risk m the field of foreign affairs
which the Fuehrer runs continuously? ... If war should break out
tomorrow we would be forced to take measures from which we might
possibly still shy away at the present moment. . . . All measures (Goer-
ing concluded) have to be taken just as if we were actually in the stage
of imminent danger of war.”^

In December, 1936, Goermg told a meeting of industrialists that
was no longer a question of producing economically, but simply of
producing. So far as securing foreign exchange was concerned it
was quite immaterial whether the provisions of the law were complied
with or not, provided only that foreign exchange was brought in some-
how. Only those who broke the law without succeeding in obtaining
foreign exchange would be prosecuted

The wastefulness and danger of Hitler’s and Goering’s programme
of autarky and of the search for ersatz raw materials were criticized
by Dr. Schacht at the time, but his economic arguments fell on deaf
ears. They were men in a hurry, indifferent to the cost or to the long-
term econonuc consequences, provided they got the arms they wanted
quickly. When Schacht persisted in his protests his resignation was
accepted,'* and Goenng continued to ride rough-shod over economic
theories and economic facts alike. By the spring of 1939 Hitler had
carried out an expansion of German military power unequalled in
' German history.

The consolidation of the Rome-Berlin Axis was marked by increased
consultation between the two parties and frequent exchanges of visits
culminating in Mussolini’s State reception in Germany in September,
and Italy’s signature of the Anti-Comintern Pact in November. Among
those whom Hitler sent to Rome were Goenng (January); Neurath,
the Foreign Minister (May); Blomberg, the War Minister (June), and
Ribbentrop (October) The initiative still came from Berlin, and — ^as
the captured diplomatic documents show — Hitler watched with some
anxiety the attempts of the British and French to renew friendly rela-
tions with the Duce.

^ Minutes of the Miimterrat, 4 September, 1938; N.D. EC-416.

” This account of his speech (17 December, 1936) is taken from Schacht: Account
Rendered, page 98.

“ See below, pages 375-6.

328

THI roTjNiLRitu PI\CI, 1933-1937

On 2 January, 1937, Ciano signed a “ai'i)!'i,‘n'’cn\ agiccincnl” with
England in which each country rccugni/cd ihe o* ,c''\ \ilal nitcrc .fs in
the freedom of the Mediterranean, and agreed that there shouks be no
alteration in the status quo in that re‘:_H!ii. ('I i-e tintish Mere pariicularly
anxious about the possibility of Italy's acquiring the ihiieinc Islands,
off Spain ) Shortly afterwards Hiller sent Goenng to Rome on an
exploratory mission. Goenng had two talks with Mussolini, on 15
January and 23 January, in which he clumsily tried to sound out the
Duce’s opinions on a number of issues. It is evident from the record
of the two conversations that each side regarded wiiii some suspicion
the other’s attempts to reach an understanding with England. Above
all, Austria was still a danger-point iii German-ltali.ui reLiliui.s, and
Mussolini did not relisii Goenng's obvious assumption of the inevita-
bility of the Anschluss. Paul Schmidt, who was pre-ent as the inlei-
preter, says that Mussolini shook his head vclierat nliy, and lUissdl,
the German Ambassador, reported to Berlin: “i got t'uc impression
that General Goenng's statement regarding Austiia liad nitl voth a
cool reception, and that he himself, rcah/mg this fact, had by no means
said all that he had planned to say."*

At his second conversation with the Ducc a week later (23 January)
Goenng was more circumspect. He confined himseil' to urging Musso-
lini to bring pressure to bear on the .Austrian Government to observe
the terms of the Austro-German Agreement, and although he* made
plain Germany’s dislike of the Schuschnigg Government, and her refusal
to tolerate a Hupsburg restoration in Austria, he added the assurance
that for Hitler’s part there would be no surpnscs as far as Au>tna
was concerned." Accoiding to Hassell, who siibsequcitly had a I'on-
versation with Ciano, Goenng’s more tactiul behavioui on the second
occasion reassured the Italians. “Of special importance,” Hassell wrote
to Goenng, “was the fact ihal you dearly slated that, vvtiiim the fiame-
work of German- Italian friendship, any German action on t’ne Austrian
question aiming at a change in the picsenl s-iualion would take place
only in consultation with Rome. I added that we, for our pait, assumed
we were safe from a repetition of Italy’s previous partnership with other
Powers (‘The Watch on the Brenner’). Ciano agieed to that as a matter
of course.’’**

These suspicions and difficulties were not easily removed. The Italians
quickly took offence at any slighting reference, such as the Germans
were only too prone to make, to their martial qualities. General von
* Memorandum bj von Hassell. G I> , Senes L), voi I, No. 199.

“ Schmidt’s Minute, dam's Diplomatic Fapets, piyes HO-81.

* Hassell to Goenng, 30 Januaiy, 1937; G.D., Senes D, vol. 1, No 208.

329

L II — L’

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Blomberg’s visit to Italy in June was far from being an unqualified
success, and Ciano’s suspicions in turn were roused by the news that
the German Foreign Minister, Neurath, was preparing to visit London.
Goering’s talks with Mussolini showed that, over Austria, Hitler still
needed to proceed with care, and when Neurath saw the Duce in May
he assured him “that the Fuehrer intends to keep as the basis of his
policy towards Austria the Pact of 11 July. Although the question is the
subject of lively interest, it is not considered by the Germans to be acute.”i
The only exception would be in the event of a Hapsburg restoration.

None the less the pull of events was too strong for Mussolini. His
Mediterranean ambitions, his intervention in Spain, his anxiety to be
on the winning side and to share in the plucking of the decadent demo-
cracies, not least his resentment over British and French policy in the
past, were added to the vanity of a dictator with a bad inferiority com-
plex in international relations, and pointed to the advantages of the
partnership which Hitler persistently pressed on him. On 4 September
it was announced that the two leaders would meet in Germany, and on
the 23rd the Duce set out for Germany in a new uniform specially de-
signed for the occasion. It was a fatal step for Mussolini ; the beginning
of that surrender of independence which led his regime to disaster and
himself to the gibbet in the Piazzale Loreto in Milan.

Hitler received the Duce at Munich, where the Nazi Party put on a
superbly organized show, including a ceremonial parade of S.S. troops.
Mussolini had hardly recovered his breath when he was whisked away
to a display of Germany’s military power at the Army manoeuvres in
Mecklenburg, and of her industrial resources in the Krupp factories
at Essen. The visit reached its climax m Berlin, where the capital was
put en fete to receive the impressionable Duce, and the two dictators
stood side by side to address a crowd of eight hundred thousand on the
Maifeld Befoie the speeches were over a terrific thunderstorm scattered
the audience in pandemonium, and m the confusion Mussolini was left
to return to Berlin alone, soaked to the skin and in a state of collapse.
But even this unfortunate contretemps could not destroy the spell which
his visit cast over him. He returned from Germany bewitched by the
display of power which had been carefully staged for him. There had
been no time for diplomatic conversations between the two Heads of
State, but Hitler had achieved something more valuable than a dozen
protocols : he had stamped on Mussolini’s mind an indelible impression of
German might from which the Duce was never able to set himself free.

^ Conversation of 3 May, 1937, Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, pages 115-7.

330

THL COUN'IEUILIT PEACl, 1933-1937

Hitler laid himself out to charm as well as to impress, and publicly
acclaimed the Duce as “one of those lonely men of the ages on whom
history is not tested, but who themselves arc the makers of history.”'
Hitler’s admiration for Mussolini was unfeigned Mussolini, like him-
self— and like Stalin, whom Hitler also admired— was a man of the
people; Hitler felt at ease with him as he never felt when with mem-
bers of the traditional ruling classes, and, despite his later disillusion-
ment with the Italian performance in the war, he never betrayed or dis-
carded him. Alt trace of the unhappy meeting at Venice in 1934 was
wiped out by the German visit and Hiller presented the Axis to the world
as a solid bloc of a hundred and fifteen million people.

“From the consciousness of that which the Fascist and National
Socialist relations have in common,” Hitler proclaimed, “there has
today arisen not merely a community of views, but also a community
of action.

“Fascist Italy through the creative activity of a man of constructive
power has become a new Imperium. And you, Benito Mussolini, in
these days will have been assured with your own eyes of one fact con-
cerning the National Socialist State — that Germany, too, in her political
attitude and her military strength is once more a World Power.

“The forces of these two empires form today the strongest guarantee
for the preservation of a Europe which still possesses a perception of
its cultural mission and is not willing through the action of destructive
elements to fall into disintegration.”-

Three weeks later Ribbenlrop appeared in Rome to urge the Duce
to put Italy’s signature to the year-old Anti-Coniintern Pact between *
Germany and Japan. Ribbentrop was disarmingly frank He had failed
in his mission to London, he told Mussolini, and had to recognize that
the interests of Germany and Great Britain were irreconcilable. This
was excellent hearing for the Duce, and he made little difficulty about
signing the Pact. After the ceremony, which took place on 6 Novembei,
Mussolini declared that this represented “the first gesture winch will
lead to a much closer understanding of a political and military nature
between the three Powers.” Ribbentrop, still smarting fiom his failure
in London, added with some satisfaction that the British reaction would
be lively “since the Pact will be interpreted as the alliance of the aggres-
sive nations against the satisfied count! ics.”-'

^ Speech on the Maifeld, 28 September, 1937; Baynes, vol. U, pages 1,361-4.

■“Ibid

“Ciano’s Minutes of Ribbentrop’s conversations, 22 OcU)bcr-6 November, 1937,
Ciano's Diplomatic Papeis, pages 139-146.

331

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Ribbentrop’s report on Mussolini’s discussion of Austria can only
have delighted Hitler. During the State visit he paid to Venice in April,
1937, Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor, had already sensed a
change in the Italian attitude. Although Mussolini still assured him of
his loyalty to Austrian independence, he laid stress on the need for Aus-
tria to meet Germany’s demands under the July Agreement, and spoke
of maintaining Austria’s integrity within the framework of the Rome-
Berhn Axis.^ Now, in his November conversation, Mussolini told
Ribbentrop that he was tired of mounting guard over Austrian indepen-
dence, especially if the Austrians no longer wanted their independence.

Austria is German State No 2. It will never be able to do anything without
Germany, far less against Germany, Italian interest today is no longer as
lively as it was some yeais ago, for one thing because of Italy’s imperialist
development, which was now concentrating her interest on the Mediter-
ranean and the Colonies. . . . The best method is to let events take their
natural course. One must not aggravate the situation, so as to avoid crises
of an international nature. On the other hand, France knows that if a crisis
should arise m Austria, Italy would do nothmg. This was said to Schusch-
nigg, too, on the occasion of the Venice conversation. We cannot impose
independence on Austria. ... It is necessary therefore to abide by the
formula, nothing will be done without previous exchange of information.^

Mussolini’s embarrassment is obvious in every line of Ciano’s minute,
and was certainly not lost on Hitler. His exploitation of the quarrel
between Italy and the V/estern Powers was beginning to yield dividends;
in his cultivation of Mussohni’s friendship Hitler had found the key
to unlock the gate to Central Europe. Four months later the gate was
swung back without effort, and German troops stood on the old Austro-
Italian frontier of the Brenner Pass.

Hitler’s interest in Italy did not lead him lo neglect Poland. In 1936
the Poles, worried by the growth of Nazi influence in Danzig and still
distrustful of Germany’s fair words, tried to strengthen their ties with
France. Friendship with France as well as with Germany would help
to reinforce that independent position which was the object of Colonel
Beck’s policy. The reoccupation of the Rhineland gave a jolt to Beck’s
complacency, and under the immediate shock the Poles renewed their
offer to the French to march.

Well aware of the stifiening in the Pohsh attitude. Hitler and Ribben-
trop gave the most convincing assurances to Count Szembek, the Pohsh

^ Ciano’s Minute of the Venice Talks, 22 April, 1937, Ciano's Diplomatic Papers,
pages 108-15 ; Kurt von Schuschnigg Austrian Requiem (London, 1947), pages 109-11.

Ciano’s Minute, page 146.

332

THE COUNTERFEIT I'lACE, 193?- 1917

Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when they reccoeii him in Berlin
during August, 1936. In Danzig. Iliiler declared. Germany would act
entirely by way of an understanding with Poland, and with respect for
all her rights. Ribbcnlrop, dismissing Danzig as a que Tu'ii ut coordary
importance, laid heavy emphasis on the common interests oi Poland
and Germany in face of the menace of Bolshevism
In his speech of 30 January, 1937, Hitler now coupled Poland with
Germany and Italy. “True statesmanship mud face realities and not
shirk them. The Italian nation and the new Uali.in State are realities
The German nation and the German Slate are likewise realities. And
for my own fellow citizens 1 should like to state that the Pohsli nation
and the Polish State Iiave also become realitic',.”' Shorllj alter Goering's
return from Rome at the end of January Hitler .sent him lo Warsaw,
where he used that bluff hypocrisy which was his diplomatic stock-in-
trade, to disarm Polish snsp'cions
“Germany (Goering told Maishal Smiglv-Rydz) was coniplelclv
reconciled to her present territonal status Gernuiuy vvouiu not attack
Poland and had no intention of scizmg the Poi^h Comdoi. ‘We do
not want the Corridor. ! say that sincerely and categorically ; we do not
need the Corridor.’ He could not give proof of this; it was a question
of whether his word was believed or not.’’-
Indeed, Goering excelled himself on this occasion He told the Poles
in confidence that there had been many advocates of a rapprochment
with Russia and of the Rapallo policy in the old Germany Army, but
Hitler had changed that. Gcimany needed a strong Poiind; a weak
Poland would be a standing invitation to Russian aggres ion, and for
that leason Germany had no quarrel with the Franco-Pohsh affiance *
Hitler foliow'ed these reassurances by offering to negotiate a minaiilies
treaty with Poland, w Inch w'as signed in Berlin on 5 ]''lovcm!x'r~- the date,
as we shall see, is wortli nothing. When Hiller received the Poli.sh
Ambassador, Lipski, he not only expiessed his satisfaction at seltling
the minorities question, but added, with great precision, that there
would be no change m the position of Danzig, and that Poland’s rights
in the Free State would be fully respected. Twice lie repeated to Lipski:

Danzig ist mit Polm verhimdcn — Danzig is bound up with Poland ’’ ■
Further visits of Colonel Beck to Berlin (January, 1938) ard of Goering
to Warsaw (in February) only serv'ed lo ic-emphasize Hi-ii r’s friendly
intentions. The Polish neutrality which Hitler thereby ensured through-
^ Baynes vol I!, rage 1,342

“ Minute of (ioeimTseonvei-,.iUon with Marsha! Sn.igly-kul/, !6 1 cinuary, 1957
Polish White Book, pages 36-8.

^ Ibid., pages 40-3.

333

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

out his operations in 1938 was of the greatest value to him. So long as
Poland stood out, and refused to co-operate against Germany, it was
impossible to build up effective resistance to Hitler’s eastern ambitions.
If Italy’s friendship was the key to Austria, Poland’s was one of the
keys to Czechoslovakia.

Meanwhile, the Western Powers continued to be preoccupied with
Spam. Their efforts to enforce non-intervention with the co-operation
of the blatantly interventionist Italian and German Governments,
though well-intentioned, only lowered their prestige. The world, however
shocked, was a good deal more impressed by the German bombard-
ment of the port of Almeria as reprisal for a bombing attack on the
cruiser Deutschland. The publication of the German Foreign Office
Archives leaves little doubt that Hitler was much less interested in
Franco’s victory than in prolonging the war. Thereby he kept open the
breach between Italy and the Western Powers, made Britain and France
look foolish by pursuing obstructionist tactics on the Non-Intervention
Committee, and provided himself with an unequalled text for preaching
his crusade against Bolshevism. His closing speech to the Nuremberg
Rally in September, 1937, was notable for the violence of his attack on
Communism, in the course of which he compared the clash between the
rival Weltamchauungen of National Socialism and Bolshevism to that
between Christianity and Mohammedanism. He produced the identi-
fication of Communism with the Jewish world conspiracy directed from
Moscow as “a fact proved by irrefutable evidence.” The Jews had estab-
lished a brutal dictatorship over the Russian people, and now sought
to extend it to the rest of Europe and the rest of the world. This, he
declared in a frenzied peroration, was the struggle being fought out on
Spanish soil, this was the historical issue to which the dilettante states-
men of London and Paris were blind.^

The German denunciation of the Locarno Pact had been followed by
the reversion of Belgium to a professed policy of neutrahty, a pohcy, in
King Leopold’s words, which “should aim resolutely at placing us
outside any dispute of our neighbours.”^ The withdrawal of Belgium,
accepted by France and Britain in April, 1937, was a further stage in

‘ Speech of 13 September, 1937. Text m Baynes: vol. I, pages 688-712.

‘ Speech of 14 October, 1936.

334

■^iHE COliNTbREhlT PLACt, 1933-1937

the disintegration of the system of collective security, ’^'el London anu
Paris still did not give up their attempts to reach some form of general
agreement with Hitler, and a desultory exchange of notes, inquiries
and diplomatic appioaches continued. A new impetus was given to
these dragging negotiations by the replacement of Mr. Baldwin by
Mr. Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister at the end of May, 1937.
Baldwin has been characterized by Mr. Churchill us possessing a genius
for waiting upon events, knowing little of Europe and disliking what
he knew.

“Neville Chamberlain, on the other hand, was alert, business-like,
opinionated and self-confident in a very high degiec Unlike Baldwin,
he conceived himself able to comprehend the whole field o! Europe
and indeed the world. . . . His all-pervading hope was to go down in
history as the great Peacemaker; and for this he was prepared to strive
continually in the teeth of facts, and face great risks for himscif and his
country.”^ Above all, Chamberlain was determined to make a new
attempt to arrive at a comprehensive settlement with the two dictators.

The fust fruits of Ciiamberlain's policy were the visit of Lord Halifax,
then Loid President of the Council, to Germany in November, 1937.
The ostensible pretext was an invitation from GoeriiiL, to visit a 1 lunting
Exhibition in Berlin, but Lord Halifax was authorized by the British
Prime Minister to see Hitler as well, and to discover what was in the
Fuehrer’s mind.

Hitler declined to come to Berlin but was willing to rcceoe l.ord
Halifax at Berchtesgaden. Halifax's opening remark, however, that he
brought no proposals, but had only come to sound out the ground,
put the German leader in a bad temper. He showed himself both wilful
and evasive. It was impossible, he declared, to make agreements with
countries where political decisions were dictated by Paity considerations
and W'ere at the mercy of the Press. The British could not get used to
the fact that Germany was no longer weak and divided; any proposal
he made was automatically suspected, and so on. He brought up the
question of colonies — “the sole remaining issue between Germany and
England” — only to declare that the British were not prepared to discuss
it reasonably; at the same time, he was careful to avoid defining Ger-
many’s colonial claims.

The German account of the interview gives the impression that
Hitler deliberately exaggerated the difficulties in the way of negotiations.
He threw doubt on the value of attempting to reach a comprehensive
settlement, insisting that discussions would need the most careful
' Chuichill: The Second Woild IVai, vol. I, pages 173-4.

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

preparation, that it was better not to be m a hurry, and that diplomatic
exchanges would be preferable to the direct negotiations proposed by
the British.^ Hitler could scarcely have expressed his indifference more
plainly.

It was a discouraging beginning to Chamberlain’s efforts— and was
clearly meant to be so. Chamberlain wrote m his private journal:
“The German visit was from my point of view a great success because
It achieved its object, that of creating an atmosphere in which it is
possible to discuss with Germany the practical questions involved in a
European settlement.”^ It needed remarkable obstinacy, however, to
believe this. By November, 1937, Hitler had made up his mind, as a result
of Ribbentrop’s failure m London, that Britain would not agree to a deal
on his terms, and he was no longer interested m the possibility of buying
time by keeping the British talking. He was by now strong enough to
risk taking action without worrying unduly about what Britain and
France would do. His experience in the past four years convinced him
that the most he had to fear was another protest. Sure of himself and
contemptuous of his opponents. Hitler was no longer concerned to keep
up appearances.

Exactly a fortnight before he listened in irritation to Mr. Chamber-
lain’s well-meant messages, on 5 November, Hitler disclosed something
of his real intentions to a small group of men m a secret meeting at the
Reich Chancellery. Only five others were present besides himself and
Colonel Hossbach, the adjutant whose minutes are the source of our
information.* They were Field-Marshal von Blomberg, the German
* War Minister; Colonel-General von Fntsch, Commander-in-Chief of
the Army ; Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy; Goering,
Commander-m-Chief of the Air Force, and Neurath, the German
Foreign Minister.

The Fuehrer was in an exalted mood Ribbentrop was in Rome, where
Italy was to sign the Anti-Commtern Pact the following day, that very
morning he had received the Polish Ambassador for the signature of
the Minorities Agreement with Poland and had given him the most
solemn assurances of German friendship. Now, from quarter past four
in the afternoon to half past eight in the evening. Hitler let himself go,
and talked as only he could talk. Silent and uneasy, the httle group
round the long table listened without interrupting.

^ Memorandum on Halifax-Hitler Conversations, 19 November, 1937; G.D.,
Series D, vol. 1, No. 31.

“ Keith Fciluig The Life of Ne\ille Chimbeilam (London, 1946), page 332.

“ G D , Senes D, vol I, No. 19, usually referred to as the Hossbach Minutes,

THE COUNTrRFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

Hitler began by explaining that what he had to say was the fruit of
his deliberation and experiences during the past four and a half jears.
Then he put the problem in the simplest terms' how to secure and
preserve the German racial community and enlarge it. Two possible
solutions were mentioned only to be dismissed: autarky, and an in-
creased participation in world economy. Germany could never be
more than partially self-suflicient in raw matciials; she could never
supply her growing population with suilicicnt foi'd from her own
resources. Yet to look to increased trade ottered no allernatnc; there
Germany had to face limitations, in the form ot competition, which it
was not in her power to remove.

Germany’s future, Hitler declared, could only be safeguarded by
acquiring additional Lehensnmm. Such living space was to be sought,
not overseas, but m Europe, and it could he found only at the risk of
conflict. “There had nev'ci been spaces wiliioul a master, am! there
were none today: the attacker always comes up against a possessor.
The question for Germany ran: where could she achieve tiic greatest
gain at the lowest cost ’’

Germany had to reckon with two hate-mspired antagonis!s--not
Russia despite all Hitler's talk of the Bolshevik menace, but Britain
and Fiaiicc. Neither country was so strong as appeared. There were
signs of disintegration in the British Empire— Ireland, India, the
threat of Japanese power in the Far East and of Italian in the Medi-
terranean. In the long run, the Empire could not maintain its position.
France’s situation was moic favouiabie than that of Britain, but she
was confronted vvilli internal political difficulties. None the less, Britain,
France, Russia and their satellites must be included as factors of power
m Germany’s political calculations

Germany’s problem, Hitler therefore concluded, could only be solved
by means of foice, and this w'as never without attendant risk Granted
the resort to foice, there remained to be answered the questions “when?”
and “how?” In considering these questions, Hiller distinguished three
cases.

First, the peak of German power would be reached by the years 1943-
1945. After that, equipment would become obsolete, and the rearma-
ment of the other Powers would reduce the German lead. “It was while
the rest of the world was preparing its defences that we were obliged to
take the offensive. . . . One thing only was certain, that wo could not
wait longer. If he was still living, it was his unalterable resolve to solve
Germany’s problem of space at the latest by 1943-1945.”

In the second and third cases, the opportunity for action would arise

337

CHANCFLLOR, 1933-1939

before that date. The second case was one in which internal strife in
France might reach such a pitch as to disable the French Army. The
third might arise in the event of a war breaking out between France,
Britain and Italy in the Mediterranean.

In all three cases, the first objective must be to overrun Austria and
Czechoslovakia, and so secure Germany’s eastern and southern flanks.
If it proved necessary to wait until 1943-1945, Hitler declared it unlikely
that Britain would intervene to save the Czechs. He believed that
Britain, and probably France too, had already written off the Czechs.
In any case, France would be very unhkely to make an attack without
British support, and the most that would be necessary would be to hold
the western defences in strength. Once Austria and Czechoslovakia
had been overrun, this would greatly increase Germany’s economic
resources and add twelve divisions to her army. Italy’s neutrality would
depend upon Mussolini; that of Poland and Russia, upon the swiftness
of the military decision.

The second case, the crippling of France by internal division, must be
used at once for a blow against the Czechs, whenever it occurred. As
for the third case, that of a Mediterranean war, Hitler believed it to be
coming nearer, and was resolved to take advantage of it, if need be as
early as 1938. It was m Germany’s interest to prolong the war in Spain.
Possibly a casus belli between Italy and the Western Powers might anse
out of the question of Italian occupation of the Balearic Islands. In
such a war, the crucial point would be North Africa. Should such a
conflict develop, Germany must take advantage of French and British
preoccupations to attack the Czechs.

This, Hitler told his audience, was his political testament to the
German nation in the event of his death This was the picture he had
formed of Germany’s immediate future. It was not, as it later appeared,
an accurate picture. Events did not follow the course Hitler had fore-
seen; war came at a date, and as a result of a situation, he had failed
to take into account. But the inaccuracy of the details matters little,
for Hitler was always an opportunist, prepared to profit by whatever
might turn up. The importance of the conversation consists in the mood,
the underlying attitude which is revealed. It provides documentary
confirmation, if confirmation is still needed, that, despite the peace
speeches and the protestations of innocence with which the inter-
vening years were filled. Hitler’s original view as he had set it out in
Mein Kampf ten years before had never changed: Germany’s future
lay in securing a continental Lebensraum, and the solution of this pro-
blem could only be achieved by force. Secondly, it demonstrates that
338

THE COUNTERFEIT PEACE, 1933-1937

Hitler had already made up his mind that, whatever the occasion, the
first stage in this solution must be the annexation of Austria and the
overrunning of Czechoslovakia — the ■whole of Czechoslo\akia. not just
the Sudetenland.

Finally, there is the date. Although Hitler fixed 1943- 1945 as the
latest period at whicli he was determined to take action, he added
specifically that he was prepared to attack, in favourable circumstances,
as early as 1938. The date at which he said this — November, 1937—
points to the conclusion already suggested, that the end of 1937 marked
a decisive stage in the development of Hitler’s plans. The harangue he
delivered on that autumn afternoon in the Chancellery summed up,
as he himself said, the experience of four and a half years and opened
the window on what was to follow. At Augsburg, on 21 November,
Hitler told the Nazi Old Guard: “I am convinced that the most dilFicult
part of the preparatory work has already been achieved. . . . Today
we are faced with new tasks, for the Lcbemmim of our people is tov)
narrow.’’^ The years of preparation and concealment were at an end:
the Man of Peace gave way to the Man of Destiny.

^Speech at Augsbuig, 21 November, 1937, B,ivnes‘ vol II, p.iges 1,370-2.

339

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE DICTATOR

In the spring of 1938, on the eve of his greatest triumphs, Adolf
Hitler entered his fiftieth year. His physical appearance was unim-
pressive, his bearing still awkward. The falling lock of hair and the
smudge of his moustache added nothing to a coarse and curiously
undistinguished face, in which the eyes alone attracted attention. In
appearance at least Hitler could claim to be a man of the people, a
plebeian through and through, with none of the physical characteristics
of the racial superiority he was always invoking The quality which his
face possessed was that of mobility, an ability to express the most
rapidly changing moods, at one moment smiling and charming, at
another cold and imperious, cynical and sarcastic, or swollen and livid
with rage.

Speech was the essentia! medium of his power, not only over his
audiences but over his own temperament Hitler talked incessantly,
often using words less to communicate his thoughts than to release the
hidden spring of his own and others’ emotions, whipping himself and
his audience into anger or exaltation by the sound of his voice. Talk
had another function, too “Words,” he once said, “build bridges into
unexplored regions As he talked, conviction would grow until cer-
tainty came and the problem was solved.

Hitler always showed a distrust of argument and criticism. Unable to
argue coolly himself, since his early days m Vienna his one resort had
been to shout his opponent down. The questioning of his assumptions
or of his facts rattled him and threw him out of his stride, less because of
any intellectual inferiority than because words, and even facts, were to

' “Das M'oit baut Bntcken in itnerfoi sch>e Gebiete.” Zoller. Hitlei Piivat, page 45
This book IS an mleiesting source for Hitler’s personal life Edited by an Interro-
gation Officer of the U S 7th Aimy, it is the leminiscsnces of one of Hitler’s
secretaries taken down in 1945 Althoi'gh her name is not given, from internal
evidence the secietary m question appeais to he either Frl Wdf oi Frl. Schroeder.
She first began to woik for Hiller m 1933 and continued to be a member of his
household until April, 1945.

340

THE DICTATOR

him not a means of rational coramunicaiion and logical
devices for nianipulatnig emotion. The introduction <
processes of criticism and analysis marked the infriis
elements which disturbed the exercise of this power.
hatred of the intellectual’ in the masses ‘"instinct is supremelmd from
instinct comes faith. . . . While the healthy common folk instinctively
close their ranks to form a community of the people, the intellecluals
run this way and that, like hens in a poultr\-viird. With them it is
impossible to make histoiy ; they cannot be used as elemeiih supporting
a community.”*

For the same reason Hitler rated the spoken above tfic wntlen word:
“False ideas and ignorance may be set aside by means of instruction,
but emotional resistance never can Nothing but an appeal ti> hidden
forces will be efreclive here. And iliat appeal can scarcely be made by
any writer. Only the orator can hope to make
As an oiator Hitler had obvious faulu. The timbre of his voice was
harsh, very difienni from the ncautilul qualil) of Goebbelsk He spoke
at too gieat length; was often repetitive and vcibose; lacked lucidity
and frequently lost himself in cloudy phiaws. llicse shortcomings,
however, inuUcied little beside the extraordinary impression of force,
the immediacy of passion, the intensity of haired, fury and menace
conveyed by the sound of the voice alone without regard to what he said.

One of the seciets of liis mastery over a great audience was his in-
stinctive sensitivity to the mowJ of a crowd, a flaii for uviriing ilie
hidden passions, resemmenls and longings in their minds. In ,\fein
Kampfhc says of the orator* ‘Tfe will alw'ays follow the lead the great
mass m such a v;ay that from the living emotion of his hcaiers the apt
word winch he needs will be suggested to him and in Us turn this will
go straight to the hearts of his hearers.”*

One of his most bitter ciitics, Otto Strasser, wrote:

Hitler responds to the vibration cf the human lieait with the delicacv of a
seismograph, or peihaps of a wiieless receiving set, enabling him, with a
certainty with which no conscious gift could endow him, to act as a loud-
speaker proclaiming the most scciet desires, the least admissible instincts, the
suffeimgs and personal revolts of a whole nation. ... I have been asked
many times what is the seciet of Hitler's extraordinary powei as a speaker.
I can only attribute it to his uncanny intuition, which infallibly diagnoses the
ills fiom which iiis audience is sutfeiing. If he tues to bolster up his aigu-
ment with theories or quotations fiom books he has only impeifecily undei-
stood, he scarcely rises above a veiy pooi mediocrity. But let him throw

^Hiller’s speech at Munich, 8 Novembci, 1938; Baynes* vul If, page 1,551,

^ Mein KampJ, page 392 ^ Ibid., pages 391-2*

341

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

away his crutches and step out boldly, speaking as the spirit moves him, and
he IS promptly transformed into one of the greatest speakers of the century.
. . . Adolf Hitler enters a hall. He sniffs the air. For a minute he gropes,
feels his way, senses the atmospheie. Suddenly he bursts forth. His words go
like an arrow to their target, he touches each private wound on the raw,
liberating the mass unconscious, expressing its innermost aspirations,
telling it what it most wants to hear.”^

Hiller’s power to bewitch an audience has been hkened to the occult
arts of the African medicine-man or the Asiatic Shaman; others have
compared it to the sensitivity of a medium and the magnetism of a
hypnotist.

The extravagant conversations recorded by Hermann Rauschning for
the period 1932-1934, and by Dr. Henry Picker at the Fuehrer’s H.Q.
for the period 1941-1942,“ reveal Hitler in another favourite role, that
of visionary and prophet. As the French Ambassador, Andre Franfois-
Poncet, noted, there was m Hitler much of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
The fabulous dreams of a vast empire embracing all Europe and half
Asia; the geopolitical fantasies of mter-continental wars and alliances;
the plans for breeding an elite, biologically pre-selected, and founding a
new Order to guard the Holy Grail of pure blood; the designs for
reducing whole nations to slavery — all these are the fruits of a crude,
disordered, but fertile imagination soaked in the German romanticism
of the late nineteenth century, a caricature of Wagner, Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer. This was the mood in which Hitler indulged, talking far
into the night, in his house on the Obersalzberg, surrounded by the
remote peaks and silent forests of the Bavarian Alps; or in the Eyrie he
had built six thousand feet up on the Kehlstein, above the Berghof,
approached only by a mountain road blasted through the rock and a
lift guarded by doors of bronze.-* It was also the mood in which he and
Himmler drew up the blueprints and issued the orders for the construc-
tion of that New Order which was to replace the disintegrating liberal
bourgeois world of the nineteenth century. After the outbreak of the
war and the conquest of the greater part of Europe, all practical restraint
upon Hitler’s translation of his fantasies into brutal reality was re-
moved. The S.S. extermination squads, the Einsatzkommandos, with
their gas- vans and death camps; the planned elimination of the Jewish
* Otto Strasser. Hitler and /, pages 74-7.

“H Picker- Hitleis Tischgesprache im Fuehrer-Hauptquaitiei, 1941-1942 (Bonn,
1951)

® It IS typical of Hitler that, according to the secretary whose account has already
been quoted, he rarely visited the pavilion on the Kehlstein, except to impress foreign
visitors like M. Franqois-Poncet.

342

THE DiCTATOR

race; the treatment of the Poles and Russians, the Slav Untermenschen—
these, too, were the fruits of Hitler’s imagination.

All this combines to create a picture of which the best description is
Hitter’s own famous sentence: “1 go the way that Providence dictates
with the assurance of a sleepwalker.”^ The former French Ambassador
speaks of him as “a man possessed”; Hermann Rauschning writes.
“Dostoevsky might well have invented him, with the morbid derange-
ment and the pseudo-creativeness of his hysteria”;* one of the Defence
Counsel at the Nuremberg Trials, Dr. Di.x, quoted a passage from
Goethe’s Dichtmg und Wahrheit describing the Demoniac and applied
this very aptly to Hitler.'* With Hitler, indeed, one is uncomfortably
aware of never being far from the realm of the irrational.

But this is only half the truth about Hitler, for the bafiling problem
about this strange figure is to determine the degree to which he was swept
along by a genuine belief in his own inspiration and the degree to which
he deliberately exploited the irrational side of human nature, both in
himself and others, with a shrewd calculation. For it is salutary to recall,
before accepting the Hitler-Myth at anything like its face value, that
It was Hitler who invented the myth, assiduously cultivating and
manipulating it for his own ends So long as he did this he was brilliantly
successful, It v,as when he began to believe in his own m:igic, and accept
the myth of himself as true, that his flair faltered.

So much has been made of the charismatic* nature of Hitler’s leader-
ship that IS is easy to forget the astute and cynical politician in him. It is
this mixture of calculation and fanaticism, with the difficulty of telling
where one ends and the other begins, which is the peculiar characteristic
of Hitler’s personality, to ignore or underestimate either element is to
present a distorted picture.

The link between the different sides of Hitler’s character was his extra-
ordinary capacity for self-dramatization. “This so-called Walwsysfcm, or
capacity for self-delusion,” Sir Nevilc Henderson, the British Ambassa-
dor, wrote, “was a regular part of his technique. It helped him both to

* In a speech at Munich on 15 Maich, 1936, just aftci the succe.ssfu! reoccupatton
of the Rhineland, against the experts’ advice, had triumphantly vindicated his power
of intuition

“ Hermann Rauschning. Hitler Speaks, pages 253-4.

= NP, partXVin, page 372

■* The word is used by Max Weber to describe the authority of those who claim to
be divinely inspired and endowed by Providence with a special mission

343

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

work up his own passions and to make his people believe anything that
he might think good for them.”^ Again and again one is struck by the
way m which, having once decided rationally on a course of action, Hitler
would whip himself into a passion which enabled him to bear down all
opposition, and provided him with the motive power to enforce his will
on others. The most obvious instance of this is the synthetic fury, which
he could assume or discard at will, over the treatment of German
minorities abroad. When it was a question of refusing to listen to the
bitter complaints of the Germans in the South Tyrol, or of uprooting the
German inhabitants of the Baltic States, he sacrificed them to the needs
of his Italian and Russian alliances with indifference. So long as good
relations with Poland were necessary to his foreign policy he showed
little interest in Poland’s German minority. But when it suited his
purpose to make the “intolerable wrongs” of the Austrian Nazis, or
the Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland, a ground for action against
these states, he worked himself into a frenzy of indignation, with the
immediate— -and calculated — result that London and Pans, in their
anxiety for peace, exerted increased pressure on Prague or Warsaw to
show restraint and make further concessions to the German demands.

One of Hitler’s most habitual devices was to place himself on the
defensive, to accuse those who opposed or obstructed him of aggression
and malice, and to pass rapidly from a tone of outraged innocence to
the full thunders of moral indignation. It was always the other side who
were to blame, and in turn he denounced the Communists, the Jews, the
Republican Government, or the Czechs, the Poles, and the Bolsheviks
for their “intolerable” behaviour which forced him to take drastic
action in self-defence.

Hitler in a rage appeared to lose all control of himself. His face became
mottled and swollen with fury, he screamed at the top of his voice,
spitting out a stream of abuse, waving his arms wildly and drumming on
the table or the wall with his fists As suddenly as he had begun he would
stop, smooth down his hair, straighten his collar and resume a more
normal voice.

This skilful and deliberate exploitation of his own temperament
extended to other moods than anger. When he wanted to persuade or
win someone over he could display great charm. Until the last days of
his hfe he retained an uncanny gift of personal magnetism which defies
analysis, but which many who met him have described. This was con-
nected with the curious power of his eyes, which are persistently
said to have had some sort of hypnotic quality. Similarly, when he
^ Sir N. Henderson: Failwe of a Mission (London, 1940), page 229.

344

THE DICTATOR

wanted to frighten or shock, he showed himself a master of brutal and
threatening language, as m the celebrated interviews with Schaschnigg
and President Hacha ^

Yet another variation m his roles was the impression of concentrated
will-power and intelligence, the leader m complete cominand of the
situation and with a knowledge of the facts which dazzled the generals
or ministers summoned to receive his orders. To sust un this part he
drew on his remarkable memory, which enabled him to .-ec! off compli-
cated orders of battle, technical speciCcations and lung lists of names and
dates without a moment's hesitation. Hitler cultivated thi . gift of memory
assiduously. The fact that subsequently the details and figures which he
cited were often found to contain iniicciiracies did not matter: it was the
immediate eft’ect at v/hich he aimed. The swiftness of the transition from
one mood to another was startling: one moment his eyes would be filled
with tears and pleading, the next blazing with fury, or gi-ued witii the
faraway look of the \ isionary

Hitler, in fact, was a consummate actor, with the actor’s and orator's
facility for absorbing himself in a role and convincing himself of the
truth of what he was saying at the time he said it. In his early years he
was often awkward and unconvincing, but with practice the part
became second natuie to him, and with the immense prestige of success
behind him, and the resources of a powerful stale at his command, there
were few who could resist the impreision of the piercing eyes, the
Napoleonic pose and the “histone" personality

Hitlei had the gift of ail great pcfiticians for grasping the possibilities
of a Situation more swiftly than his opponents. He saw, as no other
politician did, how to play on the grievances and resentments of the
German people, as later he was to play on French and British fear ot
war and tear of Communism His insistence upon preserving the forms
of legality m the struggle for power showed a brilliant undei standing of
the way to disarm opposition, just as the way in which he undermined
Ihe mdependence of the German Army showed his grasp of the weak-
nesses of the German Officer Corps.

A German word, /i/igenyi/lcgeyu/i/— “finger-tip feeling”— which was
often applied to Hitler, well desciibes his sense of opportunity and
timing.

No matter what you attempt [Haler told Rauschning on one occiision], if an

idea IS not yet mature you will not be able to icahze it. Then there is only

one thing to do: have patience, wait, try again, wait again. In the sub-
' See below, chapter Vtll.

345

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

conscious, the work goes on. It matures, sometimes it dies. Unless I have the
inner, incorruptible conviction: this is the solution, I do nothing. Not even
if the whole Party tries to drive me into action. ^

Hitler knew how to wait in 1932, when his insistence on holding out
until he could secure the Chancellorship appeared to court disaster.
Foreign policy provides another instance. In 1939 he showed great
patience while ^vaiting for the situation to develop after direct negotia-
tions with Poland had broken down and while the Western Powers were
seeking to reach a settlement with Soviet Russia. Clear enough about his
objectives, he contrived to keep his plans flexible. The date he fixed for
the invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1 October, 1938, is one of the few in-
stances in which Hitler committed himself to a definite time-table, out
of fury at the way the Czechs had scored off him on 28 May.® Much
more characteristic was his action in the case of the annexation of
Austria and the occupation of Prague, where he made the final decision
on the spur of the moment.

Until he was convinced that the right moment had come Hitler would
find a hundred excuses for procrastination. His hesitation in such cases
was notorious : his refusal to make up his mind to stand as a Presidential
candidate in 1932, and his attempt to defer taking action against
Roelim and the S A. m 1934, are two obvious examples. Once he had
made up his mind to move, however, he would act boldly, taking con-
siderable risks, as in the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, or the
invasion of Norway and Denmark just before the major campaign in
the west.

Surprise was a favourite gambit of Hitler’s, in politics, diplomacy and
war: he gauged the psychological effect of sudden, unexpected hammer-
blows in paralysing opposition An illustration of his appreciation of the
value of surprise and quick decision, even when on the defensive, is the
second presidential campaign of 1932 It had taken Goebbels weeks to
persuade Hitler to stand for the Presidency at all. The defeat in the first
ballot brought Goebbels to despair; but Hitler, now that he had com-
mitted himself, with great presence of mind dictated the announcement
that he would stand a second time and got it on to the streets almost
before the country had learned of his defeat. In war the psychological
effect of tlie blitzkrieg was just as important in Hitler’s eyes as the

'Hermann Rauschning- Hitler Speaks, page 181. The present author shares the
view of Mr. Trevor-Roper that Rauschning’s account of his conversations with
Hitler in this book has been vindicated by the evidence of Hitler’s views which has
been discovered since its publication and that it is an important source for any
biography of Hitler.

“ See below, chapter VIII.

346

THt DICTATOR

strategic: it gave the impression that the German military machine was
more than life-size, that it possessed some virtue of invincibility against
which ordinary men could not defend themselves.

No regime in history has ever paid such careful attention to psycho-
logical factors in politics Hitler was a master of mass emotion. To
attend one of his big meetings was to go through an emotional ex-
perience, not to listen to an argument or a programme. Yet nothing was
left to chance on these occasions. Every device for heightening the
emotional intensity, every trick of the theatre was used. The Nuremberg
rallies held every year in September were masterpieces of theatiical art,
with the most carefully devised effects. ‘T had spent six years in St.
Petersburg before the war m the best days of the old Russian ballet,”
wrote Sir Nevile Henderson, “but for grandiose beauty 1 ha\c never seen
a ballet to compare with it.”‘ To see the films of the Nureinberg rallies
even today is to be recaptured by the hypnotic effect of thousands of
men marching in peifect order, the music of the massed bands, the forest
of standards and flags, the vast perspectives of the stadium, the smoking
torches, the dome of searchlights. The sense of power, offeree and unity
was irresistible, and all converged with a mounting crescendo of excite-
ment on the supreme moment when the Fuehrer himself made his entry.
Paradoxically, the man who was most affected by such spectacles was
their originator. Hitler himself, and, as Rosenberg remarks in his
memoirs, they played an indispensable part in the process of .self-
mtoxication.

Hitler had grasped as no one before him what could be done xxith a
combination of propaganda and terrorism. For the complement to the
attractive power of the great spectacles was the compulsive power of the
Gestapo, the S.S. and the concentration camp, heightened once again by
skilful propaganda. Hitler was helped m this not only by his own per-
ception of the sources of power in a modern urbanized mass-society,
but also by possession of the technical means to manipulate them.
This was a point well made by Albert Speer, Hiller’s highly intelligent
Minister for Armaments and War Production, in the final speech he
made at his trial after the war.

Hitler’s dictatorship [Speer told the couit] differed in one fundamciitj!
point from all its predecessors in history. His was the tii st dictatorship in
the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which
made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own
country.

* Henderson, page 71.

347

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty
million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible
to subject them to the will of one man. . . .

Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants, even at the lowest
level, men who could think and act independently. The totahtanan system
m the period of modern technical development can dispense with them; the
means of communication alone make it possible to mechanize the lower
leadership. As a result of this there arises the new type of the uncritical
recipient of orders. . . . Another result was the far-reaching supervision of
the citizens of the State and the maintenance of a high degree of secrecy for
criminal acts.

The nightmare of many a man that one day nations could be dominated
by technical means was all but realized in Hitler’s totalitarian system.^

In making use of the formidable power which was thus placed in his
hands Hitler had one supreme, and fortunately rare, advantage: he had
neither scruples nor inhibitions. He was a man without roots, with
neither home nor family; a man who admitted no loyalties, was bound
by no traditions, and felt respect neither for God nor man. Throughout
his career Hitler showed himself prepared to seize any advantage that
was to be gained by lying, cunning, treachery and unscrupulousness.
He demanded the sacrifice of milhons of German lives for the sacred
cause of Germany, but in the last year of the war was ready to destroy
Germany rather than surrender his power or admit defeat
Wary and secretive, he entertained a universal distrust. He admitted
no one to his counsels. He never let down his guard, or gave himself
away. This is reflected in the almost total absence of any correspon-
dence apart from official letters such as those he wrote to Mussolini
Hitler rarely committed himself to paper “He never,” Schacht wrote,
“let slip an unconsidered word. He never said what he did not intend to
say and he never blurted out a secret. Everything was the result of cold
calculation.”^

While he was in Landsberg gaol, as long ago as 1924, Hitler had pre-
served his position in the Party by allowing rivalries to develop among
the other leaders, and he continued to apply the same principle of “divide
and rule” after he became Chancellor. There was always more than one
office operating in any field. A dozen different agencies quarrelled over
the direction of propaganda, of economic policy and the intelligence
services. Before 1938 Hitler continually went behind the back of the
Foreign Office to make use of Ribbentrop’s special bureau or to get

^ Final statement by Speer, N P , part XXII, pages 406-7.

“ Schacht, page 219.

348

THE DICTATOR

information through Party channels. The cluahsin of Party and S
organizations, each with one or more divisions for the same function,
was deliberate. In the end this reduced efficiency, but it strengthened
Hitler’s position by allowing him to play off one department against
another. For the same reason Hiller put an end to regular cabinet
meetings and insisted on dealing with ministers singly, so that they could
not combine against him. ‘‘1 have an old principle,” he told Ludecke;
“only to say what must be said to him who must know it, and only
when he must know it.” On’y the Fuehrer kept all the threads in his
hand and saw the whole design. If ever a man exercised absolute power
it was Adolf Hitler.

He had a particular and inveterate distrust of experts. He refused to
be impressed by the complexity of problems, insisting until it became
monotonous that if only the will was there any problem could be solved.
Schacht, to whose advice he refused to listen and whose admiration was
reluctant, says of hinr “Hitler often did find astonishingly simple
solutions for problems which had seemed to otheis insi'hible He had a
genius for invention His solutions were often brutal, but almost
always effective In an interview with a French correspondent early m
1936 Hitler himself claimed this power of simplification as his greatest
gift:

It has been said that I owe my success to ihc fact that 1 have cieatcd a
mystique ... or moic simply that I have been iuck>. Well, 1 will tell you what
has carried me to the position 1 have reached. Our political problems
appeared complicated. The German people could make nothing of them.
In these circumstances they pielericd to leave it to the protesnona! poli-
ticians to get them out of this confused mess. 1, on Ihcothei hand, simplified
thepioblems and teduced them to the simplest teirns. The masses realized
this and followed inc.-

The crudest of Hitler’s simplifications was the most effective : in almost
any situation, he believed, force or the threat of force would settle
matters— and in an astonishingly large number of cases he proved
right.

Ill

In his Munich days Hitler always carried a heavy nding-w'hip, made of
hippopotamus hide. The impression he wanted to convey— and every

’■ Schacht, page 220.

“ Interview with Bertrand de Jouvenel, of the Putii-MitJi, on 21 Febiuaiy, 1936;
B,aynes; vol il, pages i,26b-8

349

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

phrase and gesture in his speeches reflected the same purpose — was one
of force, decision, will. Yet Hitler had nothing of the easy, assured
toughness of condottieri like Goering and Roehm His strength of
personality, far from being natural to him, was the product of an
exertion of will: from this sprang a harsh, jerky and over-emphatic
manner which was very noticeable in his early days as a politician. No
word was more frequently on Hitler’s lips than “wiU,” and his whole
career from 1919 to 1945 is a remarkable achievement of will-power.

To say that Hitler was ambitious scarcely describes the intensity of
the lust for power and the craving to dominate which consumed him.
It was the will to power in its crudest and purest form, not identifying
itself with the triumph of a principle as with Lenin or Robespierre— for
the only principle of Nazism was power and domination for its own sake
— nor finding satisfaction in the fruits of power, for, by comparison with
other Nazi leaders like Goering, Hitler lived an ascetic hfe. For a long
time Hitler succeeded in identifying his own power with the recovery
of Germany’s old position in the world, and there were many in the
1930s who spoke of him as a fanatical patriot. But as soon as the
interests of Germany began to diverge from his own, from the beginning
of 1943 onwards, his patriotism was seen at its true value — Germany,
like everything else in the world, was only a means, a vehicle for his
own power, which he would sacrifice with the same indifference as the
lives of those he sent to the Eastern Front. By its nature this was an
insatiable appetite, securing only a temporary gratification by the
exercise of power, then restlessly demanding an ever further extension
of it.

Although, looking backwards, it is possible to detect anticipations of
this monstrous will to power in Hitler’s early years, it remained latent
until the end of the First World War and only began to appear notice-
ably when he reached his thirties. From the account in Mein Kampf it
appears that the shock of defeat and the revolution of November, 1918,
produced a crisis in which hitherto dormant faculties were awakened
and directed towards the goal of becoming a pohtician and founding a
new movement. Resentment is so marked in Hitler’s attitude as to
suggest that it was from the earher experiences of his Vienna and
Munich days, before the war, that there sprang a compelling urge to
revenge himself upon a world which had slighted and ignored him.
Hatred, touchiness, vanity are characteristics upon which those who
spent any time in his company constantly remark. Hatred intoxicated
Hitler. Many of his speeches are long diatribes of hate — against the Jews,
against the Marxists, against the Czechs, the Poles and the French. He

350

THE DICTATOR

had a particularly venomous contempt for the intellectuals and the
educated middle-classes, ‘Hhe gentlemen with diplomas,” who belonged
to that comfortable bourgeois world which had once rejected him and
which he was determined to shake out of its complacency and destroy
in revenge.

No less striking was his constant need of praise. His vanity was in-
appeasable, and the most fulsome flattery was received as no more than
his due. The atmosphere of adulation in which lie lived seems to have
deadened the critical faculties of all who came into it. The most banal
platitudes and the most grotesque errors of taste and judgment, if
uttered by the Fuehrer, were accepted as the words of inspired genius.
It is to the credit of Roehm and Gregor Strasser, who had known Hitler
for a long time, that they were irritated and totally unimpressed by this
Byzantine attitude towards the Fuehrer, to which even the normally
cynical Goebbels capitulated: no doubt, this was among the reasons
why they were murdered.

A hundred years before Hitler became Chancellor, Heyi in a famous
course of lectures at the University of Berlin, had pointed to tlie role of
“World-historical individuals” as the agents by which “the Will of the
World Spirit,” the plan of Providence, is carried out.

They may all be called Heroes, in as much as they have deiivcd their
purposes and their vocation, not from the calm icguiar course of things,
sanctioned by the existing order; but from a concea led fount, fi om that inner
Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which impinges on the oiilci work!
as on a shell and bursts it into pieces. (Such were Alexander, Caesar,
Napoleon.) They were practical, political men. But at the same time they
were thinking men, who had an insight into the lequirements of the timc-
whai was npe for development. This was the veiy Truth for their age, foi
their world. ... It was theirs to know this nascent principle, the necessaiy,
diiectiy sequent step in piogiess, which their world was to take; to make
this their aim, and to expend then encigy in promoting li, World-hisloiical
men — the Heroes of an epoch-must therefore be recognized as its clear-
sighted ones: their deeds, their words aie the best of their timed

To the objection that the activity of such individuals frequently flies
in the face of morality, and involves great sufferings for others, Hegel
replied:

World History occupies a higher ground than that on winch morality has
properly its position, which is personal character and the conscience of
individuals. . . , Moral claims which are irrelevant must not be brought into

1 Hegel- Leant es on the Philoi>ophy of Hiaory, translated b> J. Sibice (London,
1902), pages 31-2.

351

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

collision with world-historical deeds and their accomplishment. The litany
of private virtues — modesty, humility, philanthropy and foibearance—
must not be raised against them.^ So mighty a form [he adds elsewhere]
must trample down many an innocent flower — crush to pieces many an
object in its path.®

It may well be questioned whether Hitler ever read Hegel, but like so
many other passages m nineteenth-century German literature— in
Nietzsche, in Schopenhauer, m Wagner — ^it finds an echo in Hitler’s
belief about himself. Cynical though he was. Hitler’s cynicism stopped
short of his own person: he came to believe that he was a man with
a mission, marked out by Providence, and therefore exempt from the
ordinary canons of human conduct.

Hitler probably held some such belief about himself from an early
period. It was clear enough m the speech he made at his trial m 1924,®
and after he came out of prison those near him noticed that he began to
hold aloof, to set a barrier between himself and his followers. After he
came to power it became more noticeable. It was in March, 1936, that
he made the famous assertion already quoted: “I go the way that
Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleep-walker.”^ In 1937 he
told an audience at Wurzburg:

However weak the individual may be when compared with the omnipotence
and will of Providence, yet at the moment when he acts as Providence would
have him act he becomes immeasurably strong. Then there streams down
upon him that force which has marked all greatness m the world’s histoiy.
And when I look back only on the five years which he behind us, then 1 feel
that I am justified in saying That has not been the work of man alone.®

.lust before the occupation of Austria, in February, 1938, he declared
in the Reichstag:

Above all, a man who feels it his duty at such an hour to assume the leader-
ship of his people is not responsible to the laws of parliamentary usage or to
a particular democratic conception, but solely to the mission placed upon
him. And anyone who interferes with this mission is an enemy of the
people.®

It was in this sense of mission that Hitler, a man who believed neither
in God nor in conscience (“a Jewish invention, a blenush hke circum-
cision”), found both justification and absolution. He was the Siegfried
come to reawaken Germany to greatness, for whom morality, suffering
and “the litany of private virtues” were irrelevant. It was by such dreams

‘ Hegel, page 70 ® Ibid , page 34. ® See above, pages 105-6.

‘ Hitler’s speech at Munich, 15 March, 1936.

® Hitler at Wurzburg, 27 June, 1937, Baynes; vol I, page 411.

' Hitler before the Reichstag, 20 February, 1938, Baynes vol. II, pages 1,381-2.
352

Tllfi DICTA! OR

that he sustaiaed the ruthlessncss and uetcrmination of hi-, will. Sc long
as this sense of mission was balanced by the cynicci c,ilc.i: .'iioiis of the
politician, it represented a souice of strength, but .mcce /; was iatal.
When half Europe lay at his feet and all need of resti-jint rav I’.ed.
Hitler abandoned himself entirely to megalomania. He became con-
vinced of his own mfallibihly. But when he began lo look to die ..n.oje
he had created to work miracles of its own accord— mslcad ^1 e\p!oHms
It— his gifts deteriorated and his intuition deluded nun. Ironicaliy,
failure sprang from the same capacity which broughi iii.a lucaws, hb
power of self-dramatizauon, his ability to convince hin/scii'. Hii b..'d‘
m his power to work miracles kept him going wlien the nioie scepucai
Mussolini faltered. Hitler played out his '•woilJ-.u.torica!" mlc to the
bitter end. But it was this same belief which curtained liun in iliihion
and blinded him to what was actuary luppening, le iJmg iiim into ihut
arrogant overestimate of his own gemu-, which biougiil ism lo defeat.
The sin which Hitler committed wcs tliat w 'ach tne auciCiil firceks called
hyhris, the sin of overweening piide, of believing himse f to be more
than a man. 11 ever a man vu.s dcslrojed by the iiiug. tiJ created
It was Adolf Hitler.

After he became Chancellor Hitler had to submit to a certain degree of
routine. This was against his natural inclinatioa. He luted systematic
work, hated to submit to any discipline, even sell'-imposed. .'kdimnislra-
tion bored him and he habitually left as much as he could to others, an
important fact in explaining the power of men live !ie-.> and Martin
Bormann, who relieved him of much of his paper-won,.

When he had a big speech to prepare he would put olf beginning woik
on it until the last moment. Once he Cviuld bring hmuJi to begin dic-
tating he worked himself into a passion, rehearsing the whole perfos-
raance and shouting so loudly that liis voice echoed through the
neigitbourmg rooms. The speech composed, he was a man with a liwd
off ins mind. He would invite his secretaries to lunch, praising and
flattering them, and often using his gifts as a mimic to amuse them He
fussed about corrections, however, especially about ids ability lo read
them when delivering his speech, for Hitler wore spectacles in his olhcc,
but refused to be seen wearing them m public. T'o overcome this diffi-
culty his speeches were typed on a special machine with characters
twelve millim etres high. Although his secretaries, like his personal

353

L.H. — M

servants, tended to stay with him, he was not an easy man to work for,
incalculable in his moods and exacting m his demands.

Most North Germans regarded such schlainpeiei, slovenliness and
lack of discipline as a typical Austrian trait. In Hitler’s eyes it was part
of his artist nature; he should have been a great painter or architect,
he complained, and not a statesman at all. On art he held the most
opinionated views and would tolerate no dissent. He passionately hated alt
forms of modern art, a term in which he included most painting since
the Impressionists. To illustrate his prejudices he organized the famous
Exhibition of Degenerate Art at Munich in 1937, and alongside it an
Exhibition of German A.rt, the final selection for which was made by
Hitler himself. His taste was for the Classical models of Greece and
Rome, and for the Romantic Gothic and Renussance art were too
Christian for his liking. He had a particular fondness for nineteenth-
century painting of the more sentimental type, which he collected for a
great museum to be built m Linz, the town he regarded as his home
He admired painstaking craftsmanship, and habitually kept a pile of
paper on his desk for sketching in idle moments.

Architecture appealed strongly to h;m — especially Baroque — and he
had grandiose plans for the rebuilding of Berlin, Munich and Nuremberg
and the other big German cities. The qualities which attracted him were
the monumental and the massive: the architecture of the Third Reich,
like the Pyramids, was to reflect the power of its ruleis In Munich
Hitler spent many hours in the studio of Professor Troost, his favourite
architect. After Troost’s death Albert Speer succeeded to his position.
To the last days of his life Hitler never tired of playing with archiiectural
models and drawings of the great cities that would one day rise from the
bombed shells of the old.

Hitler looked upon himself not only as a connoisseur of painting and
an authority on architecture, but as highly musical. In fact, his hking
for music did not extend very much further then Wagner, some of
Bcetho\cn and Ciuckner, light opera like Die Fledermcms and such
operettas as Lehar’s The Meiiy U tJow and La Fille dii Regiment. For
many years Hitler had a devoted admirer in Wmmfned Wagner, the
wife of Wagner’s son, who sent him parcels while he was m prison, and
later invited him to her home, V/ahnfned. Hitler never missed a Wagner
festival at Bayreuth and he claimed to have seen such operas as Die
Mcistersinger and Gdtte/'danimenmg more than a hundred times. He was
equally fond of the cinema, and at the height of the political struggle in
1932 he and Goebbels would slip into a picture-house to see Mddchen in
Unijorrn, or Greta Garbo. V/hen the Chancellery was rebuilt he had
354

ii!! UH I t i UK

projectors and a screen installed on which he frequently watched films
m the evening, including many of the foreign films he had forbidden in
Germany.

Hitler rebuilt both the Chancellery and his house on the Obcrsalz-
berg after he came to power, the original Hans IVachenJehl becoming
the famous Berghof. He had a passion for big rooms, thick carpets and
tapestries. A sense of space pleased him, and at the Berghof the Great
Hall and the Loggia had magnificent views over the mountains. Apart
from this delight m building and interior decoration. Hitler’s tastes
were simple and altered little after he came to power. Rauschning, who
was frequently in Hitler’s company in 1933, speaks of “the familiar
blend of petit boutgeois pleasures and revolutionary talk.” He liked to
be driven fast in a powerful car; he liked cream cakes and sweets
(specially supplied by a Berlin firm); he liked flowerh in his rooms, and
dogs; he liked the company of pretty— but not clever — women; he liked
to be at home up in the Bavarian mountains.

It was m the evenings that Hitler’s vitality rose He hated to go to
bed — for he found it hard to sleep — and alter dinner he would gather
his guests and his household, including the secretaries, round the big
fireplace in the Great Hall at the Berghof, or in the drawing-room of ihe
Chancellery. Theie he sat and talked about every subject under the sun
until two or three o’clock in the morning, often later. For long periods
the conversation would lapse into a monologue, but to yawn or whisper
was to incur immediate disfavour. Next morning Hitler would not rise
until eleven.

There was little ceremony about life at the Berghof. Hitler had no
fondness for formality or for big social occasions, where he rarely felt
at ease and which he avoided as far as possible. Although he lived in
considerable luxiuy, he had few needs He was indifferent to the clothes
he wore, ate very Utile, never touched meat, and neither smoked nor
drank. The chief reason for this abstinence seems to have been anxiety
about his health. He lived an unhealthy life, with little exercise or fresh
air ; he took part m no sport, never rode or sw am, and he suftcred a good
deal from stomach disorders as well as from insomnia. With this went a
horror of catching a cold or any form of infection He was depressed at
the thought of dying early, before he had had time to complete his
schemes, and he hoped to add years to his life by careful dieting and
avoiding alcohol, coffee, tea and tobacco. In the late-night sessions
round the fireplace Hitler never touched stimulants, not even real tea.
Instead he sipped peppermint-tea or some other herbal drink. He
became a crank as well as a hypochondriac, and preached the viitucs of

355

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

vegetarianism to his guests at table with the same insistence as he showed
m talking poliiics.

Hitler had been brought up as a Catho’ic and was impressed by the
organizaaon and power of the Church. Its hierarchical structure, its
skill in dealing with human nature and the unalterable character of its
Creed, were all features fiom which he claimed to have learned. For the
Protestant clergy he felt only contempt: “They are insignificant little
people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when
you talk to them. They have neither a rehgion they can take seriously
nor a great position to defend like Rome.”^ It was “the great position”
of the Church that he respected, the fact that it had lasted for so many
centuries; towards its teaching he showed the sharpest hostility. In
Hitler’s eyes Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; its ethics he
detested, and he mocked all talk of a life after death. Death was the end:
such immortality as man could achieve was in the race and history.
From political considerations he restrained his anti-clericalism, seeing
clearly the dangers of strengthening the Church by persecution. Once the
war was over, he promised hmisclf, he would root out and destroy the
influence of the Christian Churches m Germany, but until then he was
a good deal more cautious than some of his followers, like Rosenberg
and Bormann, in attacking the Church publicly.

Earnest efforts to establish self-conscious pagan rites roused his
scoin and ridicule. Nor has any evidence appeared to substantiate the
belief that he resorted to astrology. His secietary says categorically that
he had nothing but contempt for such practices, although faith m the
stars was certainly common among some of his followers like Himmler.
The truth is that Hitler was a complete materialist, without understanding
of either the spiritual side of human life or its emotional, affective side.
Emotion to him was the raw material of power. The pursuit of power
cusi Its haisli shadow' like a blight over the whole of his life. Everything
was sacrificed to the “world-historical” image, hence the poverty of his
private life and of his human relationships.

After his early days m Muu'ch Hitler made few, if any, friends In a
nostalgic mood he would talk legretfully of the Kampjzeit, the Years of
Struggle, and of the com-radeship he had shared with the Altkampfer,
the Old Fighters With almost no exceptions, Hitler’s familiars belonged
to the Nazi Old Guard' Goebbels, Ley, Hess, Marlin Bormann; his two
adjutants, Julius Schaub and Wilhelm Bruckner; his chauffeur, Juhus
Schreck; Max Amann, the Party publisher; Franz Xavier Schwarz, the

^Conversation with Rauschnuig on 7 April, 1933, Hitler Speaks, page 62.

356

TIiL UICTAli.’l

Pariy treasrrer; Hoffmann, the court phnl i^zr.ipher ft v,";s in this
intimate circle, talking over the old da>s, in the Berfiof or ri hi-. Hal
m Munich, that Hitler was me/, I at his ei,e Even towards .’.lojc iikc
Julius Streichcr or Christian Wcbci, v.ho were too di .eoiiL..-) .• to be
promoted to high ofiice. Hitler showed cor ,;.i.“!,ib!e Kn-aR^; when
Streicher’s notorious behaviour finally led to his removal I'rom th;
position of Gauleiter of Franomia, he wa-) still prc'tecte.l h> Hitler and
allowed to live m peace on his farm.

Apart from a handful of men like Ribbcntron and Speer, Hitler
never lost his distrust of those who came from the bourg - ji', world. It
was on the Old Guard alone that he belie. ,.a he co’ 1.1 leK, for ti.cy were
dependent on him More than that, he fnaad su coimn_v. !•; rwever
rough, more congenial than that of the 5011:10111-. 1:1 i Neusaihs, the
bankers and generals, high oilicials and diplornuts, wlio w ‘.‘e cag.T to
serve the new' regime once it had conic to powei. Incir it. O' ai nirfr-.
and “educated'’ talk roused all his old ekass resentment and the sus-
picion that they sneered at hi 11 behind las hack u ,.'iey did Diclatur.
ship knows no equals, and with the Old Guard Haier was sure of his
ascendancy. Even Gocring and GoebbeLs, wiio stouJ on nioie e]a.i!
terms with Hitler than any other of the Nazi le.idera, I nev: very well that
there were limits beyond v/nich they dared nut go “Vvhen a decision
has to be taken.” Goenng once told Sir Neviie H.'iu'c' on, “none of us
count more than the stones on winch we aie slundMg it is Uie huehrer
alone w'ho decides.”’-

Hitler enjoyed and was at home in the comp'P" of woinen .At the
beginning of his political career he owed rmich to the cn<-ou, age.iionl
of women like Frau Helene B-eehstem, Frau Casola HoUr’uin and
Fiau Wmmfried Wagner. Many women weic fas^i.uited by !ns hypnotic
powers; theie are vveli-attedcd accounts of the hyAtCiSa wls oh iilTcelcd
women at his big meetings, and Hitler hi..isclf att ichcu much importance
to the women's vote, if ladies were present at table he knew how to be
attentive and charming— if he was m the mood to be so. Gossip con-
nected his name with that of a number of women in whose company he
had been frequently seen, and speculclcJ eagerly on Ii.s relations witii
them, from Hcnny Hofi'mann, the daughter of lus piiotog’'aphcr, and
Lem Ricfenstahl, the ducctor of the films oi tlie N.irenibcrg Rnllies, to
Unity Milford, the sister-in-law of Sir Osw aid Mosley, who aUcmpled to
commit suicide at Mur'ch

Much has been written, on the flim-.ier.t eviJciicc, about Hiller’s se.x

‘ ticnJvison, page 282 .

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

life: he was impotent, he was affected by syphilis, he was incapable of
normal mtei course, he suffered from Louis XIV’s defect of phimosis or
paraphimosis, he practised perversions, he was surrounded by an
atmosphere of “furtive sexuality,” and so on ad nauseam. Whatever
may be the truth in these allegations, they only have a place in a study of
Hitler’s career if it can be shown that his relations with women directly
affected his political judgment and decisions. It may well be true that a
psychiatrist, provided with adequate knowledge of the facts, could show
that the whole character of the man was altered by the nature of his
sexual experience, but the evidence for a thorough psychological study
of Hitler is lacking. In such a matter speculation and inspired guessing,
especially by laymen, are misleading. What can be said with some
certainty is that no woman ever played a part in Hitler’s career com-
parable to that of a Madame de Maintenon, a Pompadour or even a
Josephine This is borne out by all that is known of his relations with
the only two women in whom he showed more than a passing interest —
his niece, Geli Raubal, and the woman he married on the day before he
took his life, Eva Braun.

Geh and Friedl Raubal, the daughters of Hitler’s widowed half-
sister, Angela Raubal, accompanied their mother when she came to
keep house for Hitler on the Obersalzberg in 1925 Geli was then
seventeen, simple and attractive, with a pleasant voice which she wanted
to have trained for singing. During the next six years she became Hitler’s
constant companion, and when her uncle acquired his flat on the
Prinz-Regentenstrasse she spent much time with him in Munich as well
as up at the Obersalzberg. This period in Munich Hitler later described
as the happiest in his life; he idolized this girl, who was twenty years
younger than himself, took her with him whenever he could— in short,
he fell in love with her. Whether Geli was ever in love with him is doubt-
ful. She was flattered and impressed by her now famous uncle, she
enjoyed going about with him, but she suffered from his hypersensitive
jealousy. Hitler refused to let her have any life of her own; he refused
to let her go to Vienna to have her voice trained, he was beside himself
with fury when he discovered that she had allowed Emil Maurice, his
chauffeur, to make love to her, and forbade her to have anything to do
With any oilier man Geli resented and was made unhappy by this
domestic tyranny. So far there is little disagreement about the facts. It
has also been said, however, that Hitler demanded that she should
become his mistress, and that the peculiar nature of his demands re-
pelled and disgusted her. The evidence for this so far consists of no more
than dark hints and circumstantial gossip at second-hand.

358

THl Die fat ok

What is ceitain is tiiut on th? morninj oi 18 S^nt^mber, h)}!, Gsh
Raubal was found shot djad in Hitler's ntanieii ilat The coroner’s
verdict was one of suicide. Again there are dark hints and nothing that
can be called evidence. If it was suicide, what wa-, her motive? Was she
driven to it by Hitler’s importunity or by his despotic trealiiienl other?
It has even been suggested tiial Hitler retiiined secretly after setting out
for Hamburg and shot her at the height of a quairel, in a pasMOu of
jealousy.

Whatever the degree of his responsibility for Geli’s deatli — and
suicide seems the most likely e.xp!anaiion— Hitler collapsed under the
shock of his loss. For weeks he w.'is incoiisoiabie, refusing to see anyone
and talking of suicide himself. According to some accounts, h's refusal
to touch meat dates from the ci oi > llirough whi-di iie passed at this time.
For the rest of his life he never spoke of Geli wiihoiit Icars coming into
his eyes; according to his own sUitenient to a number of witnc.ses, she
was the only woman he ever loved. Her room at llie Berghof was kept
exactly as she had left it, and remained untouched when the original
Haus Wachenfdd was rebuilt. Her pholug,\tph hung in his room in
Munich and Berhn, and flow'cis were always placed before it on the
anniver-^ary of her biiah and death. Was it remorse, sentimciuality,
another pose or genuine passion? There are my.>icries m everyone’s
personality, not least m that strange, contradictory and distorted
character v/hich was Adolf I iiller, and it is best to leave it as a mystery.

His relations with Eva Braun were on a different level. Over twenty
years younger than Hitler, she came of a lower-middle-class Bavaiian
family, and was employed by Hoffmann in his photographer’s shop. It
was through Hoffmann that she met Hitler and some time after Geh’s
deatli became his mistress. The affair was managed with the utmosi
discretion on both sides. Hitler gave her a small vilia in Munich and a
car as well as a regular allowance Not until Frau Raubal left the Berg-
hof in 1936 — after a quarrel over Eva— was she installed m Hitler’s own
house. Thereafter she took his sisteTs place as Huiisfnm, and sat on
Hitler’s left hand when he presided at lunch. But Hitler very rarely
allowed her to come to Beilin or to appear m public with him; when big
receptions or dinners were given she had to stay upstairs in her room.
Only after her sister niairicd Fcgclcm, Himmler’s personal representa-
tive with ihe Fuehrer, in 1944, was she allowed to appear more freely
in public; she could then be introduced as Frau Fegelcm’s sister, and
the Fuehrer’s reputation preserved untarnished.

If the original basis of the relationship was physical, it was confirmed

359

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

by familiarny and became more domestic than erotic in character.
In lime Hillei became genuinely fond of Eva; her loyalty won his
affection, and it v/as as a reward for her loyalty that, after more than
twelve years as his mistress, Hiller finally gave way and married her.
Before chat he had always refused to discuss marriage on the grounds
that It would be a hindrance to his career. Explaining his action in his
will, he spoke of “many years of true friendship,” and there is httle
reason to doubt that lie was sincere in saying this. In her company he
was at e.ase and could cease to play a pan. The nearest he came to being
eitliei numan or happy in normal terms was during the hours he spent
sprawling back in his chair beside her at tea-time, walking with her on
the terrace at the Berghof or going for a picnic with a few friends.

Warm-hearted and impulsive, Eva made no pretensions to intellectual
gifts or to any undei standing of politics. She was an attractive, empty-
headed blonde whose interests in hfe were sport— she was an excellent
skier and swimmer— animals, the cinema, sex and clothes Such ideas
as she had were drawn from cheap novelettes and trashy films, the sole
subject of which was “love.” la return for her privileged position she
had to submit to the same petty tyranny that Hitler had attempted to
estabhsh over Geli. She only dared to dance or smoke in secret, because
the I'uehier disapproved of both; she lived in constant anxiety lest a
chance photograph or remark should rouse Hitler’s anger at her being
in the company of other men, yet herself suffered agonies of jealousy at
Hitler’s interest in the women he met Sometimes he did not come to
see her for weeks at a time. Fear that he would leave her for someone
else, and her ambiguous status, left her with a feeling of insecurity.
Twice she tried to commit suicide — or made a show of it — and this
alarmed Hitler, if only because of the scandal which might arise from a
repetition of Cell’s end.

It has often been asserted that Eva Braun bore Hitler one or even two
cl.tldien, but no proof has bcv n produced. Photographs of Hitler and
B\a in the company of children are no evidence at all, for Hitler had a
sentimental fondness for children — which went no farther than giving
them bars of choc<^kUe — and was careful to be photographed with them
as often as possible. Until proof can be produced scepticism remains
fortified by luipiobab/iiiy

After the bi-giani.iB of the war Eva’s position became more secure.
Hiller cut himself off from all social fife and was wholly absorbed m the
war. She had no more rivals to fear, and the liaison had now lasted so
long ihal Hiller accepted her as a matter of course. On the other hand,
she saw much less of him. In the latter part of the war Hitler paid few

rilL DIC'IAKJK

visits to the Bcrghof and she was not allowed to ni 'ac to the Fuehrci’-.
headquarters. At no time was she in a position to inlluence the major
calculations of policy or war. To the end she remained wh,u s-ic had
always been, a kept woman, who nescr touched the essential HiJer,
his will to power or the histone image ot the huehrer.

Egotism IS a malignant as well as an ugly vice, and it may wei! be
doubted whether Hitler, absorbed in the dream of his own greatness,
ever had the capacity to love anyone deeply. At the best of limes he was
never an easy man to li\'C with: his moods were too uicakiflablc, his
distrust too easily aroused. He was quick to imagine and slow to forget
a slight; there was a strong strain of sindiclivene .. in him wh.ch often
found expression in a mean and petty spile. Generosity was a \irtue he
did not recognize: he pursued his enmities uniemittmgiy.

Such sense of humour us he had was stroiigiy tmged with Sdaifkii-
freiide, a malicious pleasure m ether peop'e’s misfortunes or stupidities.
The treatment of the Jews only roused his ainuscment, and he would
laugh delightedly at the description by Goebbeis of the indignities the
Jews had suffered at the hands of the Berlin S.A. He had the iiCtor’s
gift of miming, which he used to caricature those who louw'd his scorn.
Indifferent towards the sufferings of others, lie kivkcd ai! feeling of
sympathy, was brutal, intolerant and callous, and filled w ith contempt
for the common run of humanity. Pity and mercy he icgnrded as
humanitarian clap-trap and signs of weakness. The only viitue was to
be hard, and ruthlessness was the distinctive mark of supenoiity. The
more absorbed he became by the arrogant belief m his mission and
infallibility the more complete became his ioneiiness, until in the last
years of his life he was cut off from all human contact and lost iii a
world of inhuman fantasy where the only thing that was real or mattered
was his own will.

Hiticr was no fool. The element of calculation in his aelions would
never have been possible had he not possessed considerable inteliecluu!
powers. Reason, however, w'as the slave, not the master, of the passions,
a faculty for discovering means, not for criticizing ends. He combined a
technical virtuosity wilii the coarseness and ignorance of a raorui
illiterate.

The adjective “uneducated" can be applied to him in more than a
formal sense. He refused to criticize, or allow oliiers to criticize, his

361

L.H . — H

CHANCbLLOK,

assumptions. He read and listened, not to learn, but to acquire informa-
tion and find additional support for prejudices and opinions already
fixed in his mind; his reading, like his thinking, was entirely pragmatic,
never speculative.

Hitler delighted in amassing facts with which to impress his listeners,
but cared little for the accuracy of his information, provided it suited his
purpose. In the same way he used figures purely with an eye to effect. The
idea of objective science or the disinterested search for truth he dismissed
as out-of-date liberal prejudices. He claimed to have read widely in
history, but his conversation and speeches show only a superficial
knowledge of it, habitually distorted to fit his argument. Any of the
quotations he used he might have got at second-hand. He liked to regard
himself as a prophet and seems to have been genuinely unav/are of the
extent of his own unoriginality. He knew no foreign languages, and the
imaginative and speculative world of European hterature was closed to
him. One of his secretaries recalls that his library contained not a single
classic of literature, indeed not a single book reflecting humane tastes.
His reading, she adds, was limited to technical works and books of
information, together with newspapers of which he had been an avid
reader from his early days in Vienna

The hostility Hitler showed towards freedom of thought or discussion
represented a personal dislike quite as much as a political expedient.
On occasion he could be a good listener and derived much information
from questioning those who visited him, but he was intolerant of dis-
agreement or even interruption once he had begun to speak himself.
The habits of despotism extended from political to personal life, and he
became accustomed to have his opinions on any subject accepted as the
e\ cathedia pronouncements of an oracle, no matter how ignorant and
ill-founded they might be.

The basis of Hitler’s political beliefs was a crude Darwinism. “Man
has become great through struggle. . . Whatever goal man has reached
is due to his originality plus his brutality. ... All life is bound up in three
theses : Sti uggle is the father of all things, virtue lies in blood, leadership
is primary and decisive.”^ On another occasion he declared; “The whole
work of Nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness—
an eternal victory of the strong over the weak. There would be nothing
but decay m the whole of Nature if this were not so. States which offend
against this elementary law fall into decay.”^ It followed from this that

^ Speech at Chemnitz, 2 April, 1938; Prange: pages 8-9.

* Speech at Munich, 13 April, 1923; Adolf Hitleis Reden, pages 43-4.

362

THE DICl\'tOR

“through all the centuries force and power are the determining factors
. . . Only force rules Force is the first law."* Force was more than the
decisive factor in any situation; it was force which alone created right.
“Always before God and the world, the stronger has the right to carry
through what he wills. History proves: He who has not the strength-
him the ‘right in itself’ profits not a whit.”-

The abihty to seize and hold a decisive superiority in the struggle for
existence Hitler expressed m the idea of race, the lole of which is as
central in Nazi mythology as that of class in Marxist. All that man-
kind has achieved, Hitler declared in Mdn Kanipf, has been the work of
the Aryan race; “It was the Aryan who laid the groundwork and erected
the walls of every great structure in human culture.’’- But who were the
Aryans?

Although Hitler frequently talked as if he regarded the whole German
nation as of pure Aryan stock (whatever that may mean) his real view
was rather different. It was only a part of any nation (even of the German
nation) which could be regarded as Aryan. These constituted an elite
within the nation (represented by the Nazi Party and especially by the
S.S.) which stamped its ideas upon the development of the whole people,
and by its leadeiship gave this racial agglomeration an Aryan character
which m origin belonged only to a section.' Thus Hiiler’s belief in tace
could be used to justify both the right of the German people to nde
rough-shod over such inferior peoples as the uncouth Slavs and the
degenerate French, and the right of the Nazis, representing an etite,
sifted and tested by the struggle for power, to rule over the German
people. This explains why Hitler often leferred to the Nazi capture of
power in Germany as a racial revolution, since it represented the re-
placement of one ruling caste by another. As Hitler told Otto Strasser
in May, 1930 : “We want to make a selection from ihc oew- dominating
caste which is not moved, as you are, by any ethic of pity, but is quite
clear in its own mind that it has the right to dominate others because it
represents a better race.”^

In Hitler’s and Himmler's plans for the S.S. — a racial elite selected
with the most careful eye to Nazi eugenics— recruitment was to be open
not only to Germans, but to Aryans of other nations as well.

The conception of the nation [Rauschning records Hitler say .ng],has become

meaningless. We hare to get nd of this false conception and set in its pLc.

1 Speech at Essen, 22 November, 1936; Prange page 4.

2 Speech at Munich, 13 Apal, 1923, already cited. “ Mem Kampf, s'age 243.

^ Cf , e g , Hitler’s closing speech at the Nuremberg Pc/ tcUag, 3 Se,.te..iber, 1933,
Baynes: vol I, pages 464-6

^ Otto Strasser. Mihutersesjel oder Rewlutwn' reporting their discussion of 21
May, 1930, pages 12-14

363

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

the conception of race. The New Order cannot be conceived in terms of the
national boundaries of the peoples with an historic past, but in terms of race
that transcend these boundaries. ... I know perfectly well that in the
scientihc sense there is no such thing as race. But you, as a farmer, cannot
get your breeding light without the conception of race. And I, as a politician,
need a conception which enables the order that has hitherto existed on an
historic basis to be abolished, and an entirely new and anti-historic order
enforced and given an intellectual basis. . . . And for this puipose the con-
ception of race serves me well. . . . France carried her great Revolution
beyond her borders with the conception of the nation. With the conception
of race, National Socialism will carry its revolution abroad and recast the
woild.

I shall bring into operation throughout all Europe and the whole world
this process of selection which we have earned out through National
Socialism in Germany. . . . The active sections in nations, the militant,
Nordic section, will rise again and become the ruling element over these
shopkeepers and pacifists, these puritans and speculators and busybodies.

, . . There will not be much left then of the cliches of nationalism, and
precious little among us Germans. Instead theie will be an understanding
between the various language elements of the one good ruling race.”^

This is Hitler at his most flamboyant, and it is not to be taken too
literally. Hitler was a master of nationalist appeal, and old-fashioned
nationalism was \ery far from being played out m Europe. Fliiler’s
foreign policy w as nationalist m character, and nationalism, both that
of the Occupied Countries and that of the Germans, cut across and
wrecked the attempt to turn the Quislings and the S S. into an inter-
national Nazi elite, just as it proved too strong for the Jacobins outside
France in the 1790s. But it is also a passage characteristic of Hitler’s
way of talking, a straightforward claim to unlimited power was dressed
up in the myth of a “pure” lace, just as on other occasions Hitler gave
It a Wagnerian colouring and talked of founding a new Order of
Knights

What Hitler w^as seeking to express in his use of the word “race” was
his belief in inequality— both between peoples and individuals— as
anciher of the iron laws of Nature. He had a passionate dislike of the
egalitarian doctrines of democracy in every field, economic, political
and international.

Thcie are [he said m his speech to the Dtisscldorf Industry Club] two
closely related f*ictors which we can time and tmie again trace m periods of
national decline one is that for the conception of the value of peisonality
them IS substituted a levelling idea of the supiemacy of mere numbers'—

^ Rauschnmg . Hitler Speaks, pages 229-30.

364

TifE Di( 1 \rOR

democracy— and the other is the negation of the \alue of a reeplc, the ceniul
of any diflereiice m the inborn capacity, the achie\eircii- uf jadi\idii«i
peoples. . „ . Interaationalji;:)m and dcniccrac} a.c in^tpaiaWc cor.tep-
tions.^

Hitler rejected both in favour of the superan' .•! ih/
in international affairs and of the Nazi elite m i.ic ^ovcri^menl ui dne
state.

Just as he opposed the concept of “race” fo tlie dem 'cralic K'iicf
in equality, so to the idea of personal liberty Hitler opposed tlic superior
claims of the Volk.^

National Socialism [Hitler declared] takes as th; stalling point of \ cws
and Its decisions ncilhei the indnidual nor hum in k- h osncsui ly
into the centiai point of its whole thinking ihe htik, I la. lolL Ibj a a
b’oad-conUitioned entity m which it sees ihe Cmd-wnled built ing-HOMC in
human society. The muividual us transiloi), the IJk is peimmciil. If Ihc
Liberal Weltanschauung in its deification of the single iiidi^u uu! niiis? ’e ul
to the destruction of the Volk^ National SocuiLsm, on ihc uther hand,
desires to safeguaid the Volk, if iiccc.smv c\cn at the L\peiisc ul the 'iKli-
vidual. It IS essential that the individual '^hould siovvlv uauc to thui
his own ego is unimpmtant when ccunp ued with the exisience <4 the whole
people . . , above all he must realize that the fiecdiaii t f the in nu and will
of a nation are to be valued more highly than the indtviemai's freedom of
mind and will.®

In an interview with the New York Times Hiller summed up his view in
the sentence: “The underlying idea is to do away wiib egoiNoi and to
lead people into the sacred collective egobrn which is the luilioii.”^

The Volk not only gave meaning and purpose to the individuars life,
it provided the standard by which all other insUliitions and cLinas wcic
to be judged.

Parly, State, Army, the economic struclure, the administiat in of jmtxc
are of secondary iniportanax they me but a nicans to ihc pic ci\ dion (»f ilv
Volk, Jn so far they fuiiil tins task, they are right ana aaJul. When they
prove unequal to this task tiie> are harmiul and must ealici be itibiined Ci
set aside or replaced by bcttci mcans.^

^ Speech at DusselJoif, 27 Januai>, 1932, Bvi>ncs. vok I, '\igo 7<S3.

“I have used the ong«nel rernian woid ipstis c of u ir kding it .rio its usual
English equivalent of or ‘"nation,’’ in order to keep the siigLc.aion of the

primitive, instinctive tubal community of blood ami soil -b} toiitiast with such
modern and imificial conamctions us the State
^ Speech at the Naza Haivest Thanksgiving Cdehiations at Pud ibuig, 7 October,
1933, Baynes vol I, pag‘,s h71-2

^ Interview with Anne O’llaia McCoinuck, pubkshed in the Acu IW/i Tunes, of
10 July, 1933, Baynes vol f, page (S6()

^ Speech to the Reichstag, 30 January, 1937; Baynes vol. 1, paac 525

jOJ

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Here was the justification for the campaign of the Nazis and other
Volkisch groups against the Weimar Republic: their loyally had been,
not to the Republican State, but to the Volk, for betraying the interests
of which men like Rathenau and Erzberger had been assassinated.
•Justice, truth and the freedom to criticize must all be subordinated to the
overriding claims of the Volk and its preservation.

The Strassers and the radical v/mg of the Party argued that if the
same criterion were applied to the economic system it meant the
socialist organization of the national economy in the interests of the
Volk. Hitler’s views about econonucs, however, were entirely oppor-
tunist. The truth is that he was not at all interested in economics. He
preached the true doctrine of the totalitarian State — which the rulers of
Soviet Russia also practise, but find it embarrassing to admit — the
supremacy of politics over economics It is not economics but power
that IS decisive. As early as 1923, at the time of the occupation of the
Ruhr and the post-war inflation. Hitler kept on saying that Germany
would not solve her problems “until the German people understands
that one can conduct pohtics only when one has the support of power—
and again power Only so is reconstruction possible. ... It is not an
economic question which now faces the Geiman people, it is a political
question — how shall the nation’s determination be recovered?”’^
During the Inflation and the Depression this was clever propaganda.
He was able to cut through the technicalities of the economists,
declaring that all that was needed was the united will of the German
people to end their troubles— given that, the rest would follow. It also
corresponded to Hitler’s own practice when he came to power: faced
with economic problems, you gave orders that they were to be solved;
if the orders were not earned out, you shot people. It was on this basis
that Hitler and Goenng conducted the economic policy of the Third
Reich, and left it to Dr. Scliacht and his successors to find the answers.

' VI

As soon as Hitler began to think and talk about the organization of the
State It is clear that ibe metaphor which dominated his mind was that of
an army He saw the State as an instrument of power in which the
qualities to be valued were discipline, unity and sacrifice. It was from
the Army that he took the Fuehierprmztp, the leadership principle, upon
which first the Nazi Party, and later the National Socialist State, were
built.

‘ Speecii in Munich, 4 May, 1923, Adolf Hitleis Reden, pages 64-7.

366

THE DICTATOR

In Hitler’s eyes the weakness of democracy wa^ that it bred irre-
sponsibility by leaving decisions always to anonymous majorities, and
so putting a premium on the avoidance of difficult and unpopular
decisions. At the same time, the Party system, freedom of discussion
and freedom of the Press sapped the unity of the nation— he habitually
described discussion as “corrosive.” From this, he told the Hitlej
Youth, “we have to learn our lesson: one will must dominate us, vse
must form a single unity; one discipline must weld us together; one
obedience, one subordination must fill us all, for above us stands the
nation.”^

“Our Constitution,” wrote Nazi Germany’s leading lawj er. Dr. Hans
Frank, “is the will of the Fuehrer.”'^ This was in fact literally litie. The
Weimar Constitution was never replaced, it was simply suspenilcd by
the Enabling Law, which was renew'ed periodically and placed all powei
in Hitler’s hands. Hitler thus enjoyed a more complete measure of power
than Napoleon or Stalin or Mussolini, since he had been careful not to
allow the growth of any institution which might in an emergency be used
as a check on him.

Yet Flitler was equally careful to insist that hh power \va.s rooted in
the people; his was a plebiscitary and popular dictatorship, a demuciatic
Caesarism. This distinguished the Third Reich from Imperial Germany:
“Then the leaders had no roots in the people: it was a class stale.”'*
After each of his early coups in foreign policy Hitler duly submitted his
action to the people for confirmation in a plebiscite. In the election
campaign which followed the denunciation of the Locarno Pact and
the reoccupation of the Rhineland, Hitler publicly declared:

In Germany bayonets do not terroiize a pcopL. Heic a government is
supported by the confidence of the entire people. I care tor the people. In
fifteen years I have slowly worked my way up together with this movement.
I have not been imposed by anyone upon this people. From ihe people I
have grown up, in the people I have remained, to the People I return. My
pride is that I know no statesman in the world who with greatei right than 1
can say that he is the repiesentative of his people.'

Such statements may be taken for what they are worth, yet it is obvious
that Hitler felt— and not without justification— that his power, despite
the Gestapo and the concentration camps, was founded on popular
support to a degree which few people caied, or still care, to admit.

'Speech to the Hitler Youth at Nuremberg, 2 September, 1933; Bajnes: vol. I,
page 538.

'In the Volkiicher Beobachter, 20 May, 1936.

' Speech at Munich, 8 November, 1944.

' Speech at Hamburg, 20 Maich, 1936; Baynes, vol, 11, pages 1,312-13.

367

If the Fuehrerprinzip corresponded lo Hitler’s belief m the role played
in history by personality, Hegel’s “World-historical Figures,” the Nazi
Party exemplified the aristocratic principle, the role played by elites.
The first function of the Party was to recruit such an elite and from it to
provide the leadership of the State. “With the German Army as its
model, the Party must see as its task the collection and advancement m
its organization of those elements in the nation which are most capable
of political leadership.”^

Like all revolutionary movements, Nazism drew much of its strength
from a new cai riere otivei te aux talents, the formation of a new leader-
ship drawn from other than the traditional classes.

The fundamental conception of this work [Hitler told the Party Rally in
1937] was to break wiih all traditional privileges, and m all spheres of life,
especially m the political sphere, to place the leadership of the nation m the
hands of hand-picked men, who should be sought and found without
regard to descent, to birth, or to social and religious association — ^men
chosen solely on the basis of their peisonal gifts and of their character.^

The Party’s fourteen years of struggle served as a process of natural
selection — “just as the magnet draws to itself the steel splinters, so did
our movement gather together from all classes and callings and walks of
life the forces in the German people which can form and also maintain
States.”'* In this way, even before coming to power, the Party created the
cadres of leadership to take over the State. The difference between
promise and practice will appear in the subsequent course of this
history

Once in power the Party remained the guarantor of the National
Socialist character of the State. “Our Government is supported by two
organizations; politically by the community of the Volk organized in the
National Socialist movement, and in the military sphere by the Army.”*
These, to use another phrase of Hitler’s, v/ere the two pillars of the State.
The Party was a power held in reserve to act, if the State should fail to
safeguard the interests of the Volk; it was the link between the Fuehrer
and his Volk; finally it was the agent for the education of the people in
the Nazi h eltanschuuz,.}^- Education is an ambiguous word m this
context; on another occasion Hiller spoke of “stamping the Nazi
Weltanschauung on the German people.”' For its highest duty was
intolerance: “it is only the harshest principles and an iron resolution

1 Speech at the Nmcmboig Pwle/to'', 16 Scplcmter, 1935, Baynes \ol. I, page 442.
- Procian-ation to the NeumbeigBiHiei/ai^ 7 Scptembei, 1937, ibid , iiaacs 684-5.
“ Speech lo the Nure.iibcit PaiteiUni, 3 September, 1933, ibid., pages 478-80.

Speech at Hamburg, 17 A.ugust, 1934, ibid , page 566.

® Specen at GoJesbcig, 19 August, 1933, ibid., page 485.

368

iWt LUCiATOR

which can unite the nation into a single body capable of resistance —
and thereby able to be led successfully in politics.’’^ “The man plank
m the National Socialist programme,” Hiller declared in 1937, “is to
abohsh the liberahstic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept
of humanity and to substitute lor them the Fo//: community, looted in
the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood.”-

While Hitler’s attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt,
towards Marxism he showed an implacable hosl.lity. The difference is
significant. Liberalism he no longer regarded as a serious threat; its
values had lost their attraction in the age of mass-politic.s, especially in
Germany, where liberalism had never had deep roots. Maixism,
however, whether represented by revisionist Social Democracy or
revolutionary Communism, was a rival Wcltamckamng able to exert a
powerful attractive force over the masses comparable v'ilh that of
Nazism. Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and
Social Democracy m practice and the bitter hostility between the rival
working-class parties, he saw in tlieir common ideology the embodiment
of all that he detested — mass democracy and a levelling egalitarianism as
opposed to the authoritarian state and the aristocratic rule of an elite;
equality and fnendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality
and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national
unity; internationalism versus nationalism.

With Marxism there could be no compromise. “When people cast in
our teeth our intolerance we proudly acknowledge it— -yes, we have
formed the inexorable decision to destroy Marxism in Germany down
to Its very last root ”■* This was said m 1932, at a time when Hitler saw
111 the unbroken organization of the Social Democratic Parly and the
Trade Unions the most solid obstacle to his ambitions, and in the rival
extremists of the Gorman Communist Party, the only otlicr German
Party whose votes mounted with his own.

Hiller regarded the Maixist conception of class war and of class
solidarity cutting across fronticis as a particular threat to his own
exaltation of national unity founded on the community of the Volk.
The object of National Socialist policy was to create a truly classless
society. “The slogan, ‘The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie must make
way for the dictatorship of the proletariat,’ is simp! ' a question of a
change from the dictatoi ship of one class to that ot another, while we
wish for the dictatorship of the nation, that is, ilie dictatorship of the
1 Speah at Nuremberg, 1C Scptembei, 1935, B,.jncs: ' ol I, page 445.

2 Hitler to the Renhslag, 30 Januiii;., 1937, Prauge, page 80.

= Hitler at Diisseldoif, 27 January, 1932; Baynes: \ol. I, page 823.

369

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

whole community. Only then shall we be able to restore to the millions
of our people the conviction that the State does not represent the
interests of a single group or class, and that the Government is there to
manage the concerns of the entire community.”^ This single-minded
concept of the national interest was to be embodied in, and guaranteed
by, the absolutism of the State, as it had been in the time of Frederick
the Great and in the Prussian tradition of the State glorified by Hegel.

Just as Hitler ascribed to the “Aryan” all the qualities and achieve-
ments which he admired, so all that he hated is embodied in another
mythological figure, that of the Jew. There can be little doubt that
Hitler believed what he said about the Jews ; from first to last his anti-
Semitism IS one of the most consistent themes in his career, the master
idea which embraces the whole span of his thought. In whatever direc-
tion one follows Hitler’s train of thought, sooner or later one encounters
the Satanic figure of the Jew. The Jew is made the universal scapegoat.
Democracy is Jewish — the secret domination of the Jew. Bolshevism
and Social Democracy; capitalism and the “interest-slavery” of the
moneylender; parliamentarian ism and the freedom of the Press;
liberalism and internationalism; aiiti-militarisra and the class war;
model nism in art {Kultur-Bohchemsmiis), prostitution and miscegena-
tion — all are instruments devised by the Jew to subdue the Aryan
peoples to his rule. One of Hitler’s favourite phrases, which he claimed
— very unfaiily — to have taken from Mommsen, was: “The Jew is the
ferment of decomposition m peoples ” This points to the fundamental
fact about the Jew m Hitler’s eyes ; unlike the Aryan, the Jew is incapable
• of founding a State and so incapable of anything creative. He can only
imitate and steal — or destroy in the spirit of envy.

The Jew has never founded any civilization, though he has destroyed
hundreds. He possesses nothing of his own creation to which he can point.
Everything he has is stolen. Foreign peoples, foreign workmen build him
his temples; it is foreigners who create and work for him; it is foreigners
who shed their blood for him. He has no art of his own; bit by bit he has
stolen It all from other peoples. He does not even know how to preserve
the precious things others have created. ... In the last resort it is the Aryan
alone who can form States and set them on their path to future greatness.
All this the Jew cannot do. And because he cannot do it, therefore all his
revolutions must be international. They must spread as a pestilence spreads.
Aheady he has destroyed Russia; now it is the turn of Germany, and with
his envious instinct for destiuction he seeks to disintegrate the national
spirit of the Germans and to pollute then blood.”^

1 Hitler to the Labour Front, in Berlin, 10 May, 1933; Baynes: vol. I, page 433.

' Speech at Munich, 28 July, 1922, ibid., pages 21-41.

370

THE DICTATOR

From this early speech of 1922, through the Nuremberg Laws of 1935
and the pogrom of November, 1938, to the destruction of the Warsaw
Ghetto and the death camps of Mauthausen and Auschwitz, Hiller’s
purpose was plain and unwavering. He meant to carry out the exter-
mination of the Jewish race in Europe, using the word “extermination”
not in a metaphorical but in a precise and literal sense as the deliberate
policy of the German State — and he very largely succeeded. The
Prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials stated — and its figures have never
been challenged — that of the nine million six hundred thousand Jews
who were living in Europe at the outbreak of the war, sixty per cent are
authoritatively estimated to have perished: “5,700.000 Jews are missing
from the countries in which they formerly lived, and over 4,500,000
cannot be accounted for by the normal death-rate or by emigration;
nor are they included among displaced persons.”' History recoids few.
if any, crimes of such magnitude and of so cold-blooded a purpose.

VII

Stripped of their romantic tnmmings, all Hitler's ideas can be reduced
to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one rclatu msliip, that
of domination, and only one argument, that of force. “Civilization,”
the Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset, once wrote, “consists in the
attempt to reduce violence to the ultima ratio, the final argument. This
is now becoming all too clear to us, for direct action reverses the order
and proclaims violence as the prima ratio, or rather the unica ratio, the
sole argument. It is the standard that dispenses with all others.”

Hitler was not original m this view. Every single one ot his ideas—
from the exaltation of the heroic leader, the racial myth, anti-Semitism,
the community of the Volk, and the attack on the intellect, to the idea
of a ruling elite, the subordination of the individual and the doctrine
that might is right— is to be found in anti-rational and racist writers
(not only in Germany but also in France and other European countries)
during the hundred years which separate the Romantic movement from
the foundation of the Third Reich By 1914 they had become the stale
commonplaces of radical, anti-Semitic and pan-Gennan journalism
and cafd-talk in every city in Central Euiope, including Vienna and
Munich, where Hitler picked them up.

Hitler’s originality lay not in his ideas, but in the terrifyingly literal
way in which he set to work to translate fiintasy into reality, and his
1 Opening Speech of the Chief American Prosecutoi , N P., part I, pages 62-3.

371

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

unequalled grasp of the means by which to do this To read Hitler’s
table talk at his headquarters in 1941-1942 is to feel continual astonish-
ment at the lack of magnanimity and wisdom m his conversation, the
main qualities of which were cunning and brutality, a cocksure ignorance
and an ineradicable vulgarity. Yet this vulgarity of mind, like the in-
significance of his appearance, the badly fitting raincoat and the lock of
hair plastered over his forehead, was perfectly compatible with brilliant
political gifts. Accustomed to associate such gifts with the qualities of
intellect which a Napoleon or a Sismarck possessed, or Vv-ith the strength
of character of a Cromwell or a Lincoln, we are astonished and offended
by this combination. Yet to underestimate Hitler as a politician, to
dismiss him as an hysteiical demagogue, is to make precisely the mis-
take that so many Germans made in the early 1930s.

It was not a mistake winch those who worked closely with him made.
Whatever they felt about the man, however much they distigreed with
the rightness of this or that decision, they never underrated the ascen-
dancy which he was able to establish over all who came into frequent
contact with him. At Nuremberg, Admiral Doenitz, the Commandei-in-
Chief of the German Navy, admitted:

I puipo.sely went very seldom to his headquarters, for I had the feeling that
I would dius best prc'-civc my powei of initiative, and also because, after
set eral days at headquarter s, I always had the feehng that I had to disengage
myself from his powei of suggestion. I am telling you this because m this
connection I was doubtless nioic foitunate than his Staff, who weie con-
stantly exposed to his powei and hn peisonality.’-
Doemtz’s experience can be matched a hundred times over. Generals
who arrived at his headquarters determined to insist on the hopeless-
ness of the situation not only failed to make any protest when they
stood face to face with the Fuehrer, but returned shaken in their judg-
ment and half convinced that he was right after all.

On one occasion [Schacht lecords] I managed to peisuade Goeiing to
cxeicise his influence on Hitler to pu. on the brake in some economic mattei
or oiher only to learn aflei wards that he had not daieti raise the question
after all. When I repi cached him he lepl'ed’ “I of*cn make up my mind to
say somcihing to him, but then v hen 1 tome face to face with him my heart
sinks mio my bnol'-

On another occasion when Schacht had demonstrated to the Minister
of Difence, Gi.L..ra! von Blombcrg, the hopelessness of finding any
solution to a ceilain P'obicn, Blombcrg answeied “1 know you are
right, but I have confidence in Hiller He will be able to find some
solution.”’

^ N ?,, part Xnt, page 245

372

‘ Schacht, page 216.

® Ibid , page 220.

THE DICTATOR

The final test of this ascendancy belongs to the later stages of this
history when, with the prestige of success destroyed, the German cities
reduced to ruins and the greater part of the country occupied, this
figure, whom his people no longer saw or heard, was still able to
prolong the war long past the stage of hopelessness until the enemy was
in the streets of Berlin and he himself decided to break tlie spell. But
the events of these earlier years cannot be understood unless it is recog-
nized that, however much in retrospect Hitler may seem to fall short of
the stature of greatness, in the years 1938 to 1941, at the height of his
success, he had succeeded m persuading a great part of the German
nation that in him they had found a ruler of more than human qualities,
a man of genius raised up by Providence to lead them into the Promised
Land.

373

CHAPTER EIGHT

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE

1938-1939

The WINTER OF 1937-1938 marks the turning-point in Hitler’s
policy from the restricted purpose of removing the limitations imposed on
Germany by the Treaty of Versailles to the bolder course which brought
the spectacular triumphs of the years 1938-1941. It was not so much a
change in the direction or character of his foreign policy— which
altered little from the time he wrote Mein Kampf—a& the opening of a
new phase in its development. The time was ripe, he judged, for the
realization of aims he had long nurtured.

Hitler had no cut-and-dried views about how he was to proceed,
but, as Hossbach’s minutes of the meeting of 5 November, 1937, show,
he was revolving certain possibilities in his mind and, granted favourable
circumstances, he was prepared to move against Austria and Czecho-
slovakia as early as the new year, 1938.

The prospects Hitler had unfolded at that meeting, however, alarmed
at least some of those who were present. The brief report of the dis-
* cussion which followed Hitler’s exposition shows clearly enough the
opposition of the Army’s leaders, Blomberg and Fritsch, to the risk of
war with Great Britain and France, and their insistence on such material
points as the incomplete state of Germany’s western fortifications,
France’s military power and the strength of the Czech defences.
Neurath, the Foreign Minister, supported them so far as to remind
Hitler that a conflict between Great Britain, France and Italy was neither
so close nor so certain as he appeared to assume.

These doubts were not removed by Hitler’s irritable assurances that
he was convinced Britain would never fight and that he did not believe
France would go to war on her own. On 9 November, Fritsch requested
a further interview with Hitler and renewed his objections: Germany, he
insisted, was not in a position to court the danger of war. Neurath, too,
attempted to see Hitler and dissuade him from the course he proposed
to follow. By this time, however. Hitler was so initated that he left Berlin
374

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-11)39

abruptly for Berclitesgaden and refused to recei\e the foreign Minister
until his return in the middle of January.

Reasoned criticism of any kind always roused Hitler’s anger: he hated
to have his intuition subjected to analysis. Those who were not prepared
to follow blindly must go, and it is more than a coincidence that, within
less than three months of the meeting of 5 November, tliree of the men
who had listened to him — Blomberg, Fntsch and Neurath — were
removed from office, while those who remained were the two who had
silenced whatever doubts they felt— Goenng and Raeder. Before he
could force the pace in foreign policy Hitler had to rid himself of those
whose doubts and independent position might act as checks upon his
freedom of action.

Hitler’s most persistent critic. Dr. Schacht, had iilread> gone at the
end of 1937. From May, 1935, Schacht had written a scries of letters and
memoranda in which he showed himself more and more critical of the
economic methods by which rearmament was being pushed forward. He
jeered at economic cranks in the Party who thought they could override
economic laws, and protested at the Party’s interferenie with business
and industry. He was sceptical about the search for ci saiz raw materials
as a way of avoiding dependence on foreign sources, dismissed economic
autarky as an impossibility for Germany, and pointed to the dangeis
of sacrificing foreign trade to the demand for armaments.

Schacht did not oppose German reannament, but he warned Hitlei
and Goering that the demands they were making were greater than the
German economy could stand. Hitler’s answer, in the long run, wa.s that
if he got the arms he would be able to solve Germany’s economic prob-
lems by other than economic means— but this was more than he wanted
to admit. In any case, he needed Schacht, with his unrivalled grasp of
finance and foreign trade, to steer Geimiany through the first difficult
years until she was strong enough to take what she wanted. It was
Schacht who, by his device of the Mefo-bills, enabled Hitler to finance
his big programme of rearmament and public works without an ex-
cessive. inflation. It was Schacht again who set up the elaborate netwoik
of control over German imports, exports and foreign e.\change trans-
actions, and who provided a new basis for Germany’s foreign trade by
his barter trading, .blocked-mark accounts and clearing agieements,
manipulating these with such skill as to secure great advantages for
Germany in trade negotiations. Schacht, in short, was indispensable to
Hitler, and this alone can explain why he was allowed a freedom of
criticism unique in the Third Reich.

In April, 1936, Schacht had persuaded Hitler to appoint Goering as

375

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Commissioner for Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange, m the hope
that this would put a stop to the extravagant waste of Germany’s foreign
exchange assets and her limited supplies of raw materials by Party
agencies, such as the Ministry of Piopaganda. Goering, hov/ever,
having once entered the field of economic policy, began to take an
interest in what was going on and to amass power. After Hitler made
him Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan m September, 1936, with
the purpose of breaking down every obstacle to rearmament in the
shortest possible time, his relations with Schacht, the Minister of Econ-
omics and President of the Reichsbank, became strained. In July, 1937,
both men signed a brief statement to the effect that they were working
in the “closest mutual co-operation,” but a month latei Schacht wrote to
Goering “that fundamental differences exist in our economic policies,
which I hope will induce the Fuehrer to place the further direction of
economic policies solely in your hands.”^

Hitler was extremely reluctant to let Schacht go. A stormy meeting
at the Berghof in August, in which Hitler did e^ crything he could to
persuade him to stay, led to no conclusion, althoi gh Hitler came out
on to the terrace afterwards and excitedly declared that he could not go
on working with him any longer. On 5 September Schacht went on leave
of absence fiom the Ministry of Economics, and after further protests
his resignation was accepted on 8 December, 1937. In order to preserve
appearances he remained Minister without Portfolio, and for the time
being President of the Reichsbank as well, but from now on Goering
was able to carry out Hitler’s economic plans in preparation for war
without hindrance.

Schacht’s successor as Minister of Economics was Walther Funk,
once one of Hitler’s “contact men” with business and industrial circles.
But the post was shorn of the greater part of its powers, being wholly
subordinated to Goering as Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan.
The casual way in which Funk’s appointment was made shows clearly
enough how slight was the authoiity the new Minister could expect to
enjoy. Meeting Funk one night at the Opera, Hitler took him aside
during the interval, told him he was to succeed Schacht and sent him to
Goering for instructions. It was only after Goeiing had carried out a
thorough reorganization of the Ministry that it was finally tiansferred
to Funk in February, 1938.

After replacing Schacht by Goering, Hitler turned to the tw'O principal
institutions of the State which had so far escaped the process of Gleich-
1 Letter of 26 August, 1937 , N.D. EC-283.

376

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

schaltung~Axit Foreign Service and the Army Both were strongholds
of that upper-class conservatism which roused all Hitler's suspicon and
dislike. Hitler had at first accepted the view that the co-operaiu'ii of the
professional diplomats and the geneials was indispensable to him, but
he rapidly came to feel contempt for the advice he recci\ed fioni the
Foreign Office, whose political as well as social traditions he mga'-ded as
too respectable and too limited for the novel, half-rcvolutionaiy, half-
gangster tactics With winch he meant to conduct his foro.gn policy. U
was not so much the moral sciaples of the Wiihclmsfas.c— -these, he
had little doulil, could be overcome— as ihc social p^dcn^!ons, squeam-
ishness and lack of imagination wmeh iriiiated him. They still thougril
in teims of the olu diplomacy, not of tlie rcvoluiionar} prupayincla flfih-
column technique, corruption and incitement with vliich lic proposed
to conquer opposition. Neuiath, the Fo'cnrn M niiHcr, was one of
President Hmdenburg’s appomimcnts, and still retained some indepen-
dence of position. Now in the subservient Ribbentrop Hi.'lcr hid found
the man he wanted to replace him, and by the beginning of 1938 he
judged that this situation too was ripe for settlement.

But the ciilical relationship was that with the Anny. So far I lie bargain
of 1934 had worked well, but not without signs of iroubie, which weie
ominous for the futuie. The generals, allliough delighied v.ilh the
reaimaraent of Germany, wore critical at the speed with which it had
been rushed through. The flood of conscripts which began to pour into
the depots was more than the four thousand officers of the small
Regular Army could tram satisfactorily. The figure of thirty-six divisions
for the peacetime foice which Hiller announced in 1935 hud been
arbitrarily fixed wiihout the agreement of the General Staff, who would
have preferred a figuie of twenty-one di\isions. They regarded twenty-
four divisions, winch repie.>cnted a ticbhng of tb.c e.visling force of eight
divisions, as the maximum with which they could deal. According to
Manstem, who was at that time Chief of Staff at the headquarters of
the important Military Area III (in Berlin), he and his commanding
officer learned of Hitler’s decision for the first time over the radio.

In 1936, again, Hitler had sprung In', decision to reoceuijy the Rhine-
land on the Army High Command w iih the least possible notice. Man-
siein, v,'ho had to draft the orders for llie occupation, wa^ gi\en one
afternoon in which to draw them i;;< before the generals came to receive
their instructions the following morning. On this occasion Blombergand
fiie Army C.-in-C., Fritsch, protested to Hiller at the lisks he was
running. Hitler did not forget Ihcir oppo.sition, moie especially as events
justified his judgment and not ihcii.s.

377

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

If Hitler found it difficult to get on with the stiff, buttoned-up hier-
archy of the Army, the generals had their grievances as well They knew
little of wliat was discussed in the circle round the Fuehier, and the one
representative of the Aimy who was on friendly teims with Hitler —
General, later Field-Marshal, von Blomberg, the Minister of War —
was regarded as so much under Hitler’s influence and so compliant with
his wishes that he was given the scornful nicknames of the “Rubber-
Lion” {Gwnmi-Luwe), and “Hitler Youth Quex,” after a highly enthus-
iastic Nazi film. Tiie Army had lost the old independent position which
it had enjoyed under the Empire and— -thanks to Seeckt and Schleicher —
under the Republic as well. There was a new master in Germany, and
one with n'hose foreign and internal politics the generals were far from
being in agreement. They disliked the Pact with Poland; they were
inclined— following the Seeckt tiadition— to be friendly with Russia and
China, while they l.ad little use for an alliance with Japan and nothing
but scoin for Italy. They were alaimed at the prospect of a two-front
war after the Franco-Russian Pact, and felt a traditional respect for
France as a great militaiy Power, which was at variance with Hitler’s
contemptuous dismissal of the French as a divided nation. The Party’s
attitude towards the Churches — in particular the arrest of Pastor
Niemoeller in July, 1937 — roused considerable opposiiion in the
Officer Corps. Tins was reinforced by dislike of the S.S. and S.A , whose
ideas began to penetrate the Army as the inevitable result of conscrip-
tion. The S.S. leader, Himmler, and his chief lieutenant, Heydrich— who
had been expelled from the Naval Officer Corps for scandalous conduct
in 1930 — had secured complete control of the police in Germany in 1936.

* They now entertained the ambition of humbl mg the proud independence
of the Officer Corps, which treated the S.S. and its “officers” with icy
contempt.

The man to whom the Army looked to defend its interests was not
Blombeig, but its Commauder-in-Chief, Colonel-Geneial von Fritsch.
Fntsch had so far kept the Party at arm’s length, but he lacked any
quality of greatness such as Seeckt had possessed, and he was to prove
unequal to the hopes placed in him.

The key to the relationship between the Army and the Nazi regime
was Hitler’s own attitude. Closer acquaintance had reduced the exag-
gerated respect he originally felt for the generals. After 1935-1936 he
saw them as no more than a group of men who, with few exceptions,
lacked understanding of anything outside their own highly important
but narrow' field of specialization, a caste whose pretensions were
unsupported by political ability or, when put to the test, by solidarity

378

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

in face of an appeal to their self-interest. Hitler indeed was one of the
few Germans to emancipate himself from the legendary spell of Get man
militarism. By the beginning of 1938, with his power securely established
and with the foundations of German militaiy rearmament solidly laid,
he no longer felt the same need to buy the Army’s support on its own
tenns as he had in 1933 and 1934, when its tacit support had been a
decisive factor in his secunng and retaining power, Tlius when Blombcrg
and Fritsch, on the grounds of Germany’s unpreparedness, attempted
to apply a brake to the development of his foreign policy, he paid no
heed either to their judgment or to the need of appeasing theii doubts.

Hitler was still smarting with irritation at the opposition Fritsch had
expressed in November, 1937, when an apparcnily unconnected .e-ies
of events provided him with the chance to end once and for all the
pretensions of the High Command to independent v.cws. The tiap was
sprung by Himmler and Goeiing, and it is possible that Hitler was
uiiav/are of what was being planned by these two. But i idler was
nobody’s dupe, and the use which he made of the opportunu> thrust
into his hands displayed his political gifts to sinistci advantage.

The trouble began with Bloraberg’s eagerness to get married (for the
second time) to a certain Fraulein Erna Griihn, 'vhose origins were
obscure and who, Blomberg admitted, was a lady w.th a “past.” Aware
of the shock this would give to the rigid views of the Officer Corps on
the social suitability of the wife of a Field-Marshal and a Minister of
War, Blomberg consulted Goering as a brother-office i . Goei ing not only
encouraged him, but helped to ship an inconvenient rival off to South
America. When the mariiage took place — very quietly — on 12 January,
Hitler and Goering vveie the two principal witnesses.

At this stage, however, complications arose. A police dossier was
discovered which disclosed that the wife of the Field-Mar hal luid a
police record as a prostitute and had at one time been convicted of
posing for indecent photographs. Blomberg luid dislionouicd (he
Officer Corps, and the generals saw no reason to spare u man vv horn they
had long disliked for his altitude tovNards Hitler. Supported by Goering,
and urged on by the Ch'cf of Staff, General Beck, the Commander-in-
Chief, von Fritsch, requested an interview with Hitler and presented
the Aimy's protest: Blombcig must go. Hitbr, who appears to have
felt that he too had been made to look a fool, eventual!} agreed. The

379

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

question then arose who was to succeed Blomberg as Mmjster of War
and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces^

Fritsch was the obvious candidate, but there were powerful forces
opposed to his appointment. Himmler regarded him as the man re-
sponsible for defealing his attempts to extend the power of the S.S. to
the Army. For a long time he had been watching for an opportunity
to get rid of Fritsch. Goering, already Commander-in-Chief of the Air
Force, was ambitious to get Blomberg’s place foi himself. Indeed, the
part played by Goering throughout the whole affair — his encouragement
of Blomberg, and the fact that it was he who informed Hitler of the
information which had come to light about Erna Griihn after the mar-
riage — invites suspicion.” Finally, Hitler too must have hesitated to
appoint a man who had shown himself so lukewarm and unconvinced
by the Fuehrer’s genius at the secret conference on 5 November.

Whatever Hitler’s doubts, Himmler and Goering settled the matter
by again producing a police dossier, this time to show that General von
Fritsch had been guilty of homosexual practices. They went further:
when Hitler summoned Fritsch to the Chancellery at noon on 26
January and faced him with the charges in the dossier, they arranged for
the Commander-in-Chief to be confronted with Hans Schmidt, a young
man who made his living by spying on and blackmailing well-to-do
homosexuals.

Schmidt identified Fritsch as one of those from whom he had extorted
money. In view of Sclimidt’s pohcc record this was the flimsiest piece
of evidence, and was later torn to shreds at the court of enquiry. The
officer in question, it then emerged, was not Fihsch at all, but a retired
* cavalry officer of the name of Frisch This fact was perfectly well known
to the Gestapo, who later arrested Frisch in oi der to prevent the defence
getting his evidence. Eventually Schmidt confessed in court that he had
been thieatened by the Gestapo if he did not agree to their demands and
incummate Fritsch, as Himmler ordered Schmidt paid for this indis-
cretion with his life But by then the trick liad sei ved its purpose. In face
of Hitler’s angry charges, General von Fritsch mamtamed an indignant
silence, and when Hiller, either genuinely deceived or feigning convic-
tion, sent him on indefi iite leave, he refused to take any action to
defend himself.’’

’^Te, Commander-m-Cliief of the IVetu inaiLi, wh'.i.h included all the Armed
Forces of the State Fiitsch v.as the Cominandcr-m-Chief of the Army {Reichwskr\
which formed a prit of the ht

- At the Nuremberg Truils m !*>I6 Gcermg sent a th'eatening message to Gisevius
that, if he said too much m the viitncss-box about the Blomberg case, he would tcil
dll that he knew about Schatht, Giscmus’s patron. Cf N P., pait XII, pages 214-6

^Cf Graf Kielmansegg Dw F/iiic/iP/ozew (Hamburg, 1949).

380

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

Fritsch’s altiuide frustrated the efTorvS of the httie group of men who
were later to form the secret opposition to Hitler and ’,\ho now eaiiic
together for the first time in an attempt to use fiitseh's tieiitiuent as
grounds for action by the Army against the reg.ine. W'i.ea rritseh
returned to the Geneiai Staff building in the Beudieistrasse, aftet his
interview with Hitler, Be^k, the Chief of the Gene. a! Stalf, urged him
to carry out a coup cl'dtat with the one force in Germany which still
remained outside the Party’s control— the Army, fritsch declined.

Even so, for a few days it looked as if the affair might icad to a major
crisis comparable wkh that of 30 June, 1934. Haler poGnoneJ his
customary speech to the Reielustag on 30 January, and u furous battle
developed behind the scenes round the question wheliicr tiieie should
be a court of enquiiy into the elungcs against Fill, eh and. if so, wlu,
should conduct it, the Amy or the Parly. Behind this loomed tlic far
bigger question of who was to be given command of the .\rin>. for now
not only Blomberg’s office of Munster of War and CoininaiKlci-in-Chier
of the Armed Forces, but also Fritsch’s as Commander-in-C liief of the
Army, had to be filled.

On 31 January Beck accompanied PvundsteJt, the senior general of
the Army, to an interview in which Fiiller raged again' l all generals.
The one concession they gut from him was a reluctan! a ncement to an
enquiry into the Fritsch case. Hiiler, howevet, had aiie.iJ} seen how to
turn the situation to his own advantage, withoul giving in to the dem.inds
of Goermg and Himmler on the one hand, or of the Aimy represented
by Beck and Rundstedt on the other.

His solution to t!ie problem was presented to the (jcrman Cabinet,
when It met for the last lime during the Third Rueh on .Monda>,
4 February. After announcing Blomberg’s resig’ation, Hiiici added
that von Fritsch, too, had asked to be relieved of ar. duties as Corn-
man der-m-Chief of the Army on the grounds of ill-hea'nh. Biomberg’s
successor was to be neither Fritsch iiur Gwn.ig, but Hitiei himself.
Hitler had been, since Hindenburg’s death, the Sup.eme Conimaiidei of
the Armed Forces, an office which went with Sh:'! of 1 lead of the State.
Now he assumed in addition Blombeig’s olliee orCoii!ni..mier-m-('iiief
of the Armed Forces and abolished the old post of War Munster which
Blomberg had held as well. He wanted no successor to a position which
in the hands of an independent man might have been used to represent
the views of the Army in opposition to his own. 'flic work of the War
Ministry was henceforw'ard to be done by a separate 1 ligli Command of
the Armed Forces (Obci-konuvaiulo dci il chrmacht, the f.nniiiar O.K W.
of the War Communiques), which in fact became Hitler’s personal stall'.

381

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

To the head of the O.K. W. he appointed a man who was to prove quite
incapable of withstanding him, even if he had wanted to — General
Wilhelm Keitel.

In General von Brauchitsch Hitler found a man acceptable to the
Officer Corps m Fritsch’s posi of Commander-in-Chief of the Army,
and he eventually agreed that the case against Fritsch should be in-
vestigated by a military court. At the same time, however, he took the
chance to retire sixteen of the senior generals and to transfer forty-
four others to different commands. To console Goering, Hitler promoted
him to the rank of Field-Marshal, a step which gave him precedence
over the other Commanders-in-Chief and made him the senior German
officer.

The purge extended further than the Army. Neurath was relieved of
his office as Foreign Minister, appointed as President of a newly created
Cabinet Privy Council (which never met), and replaced at the Wilhelm-
strasse by Ribbentrop. The three ambassadors in the key posts of
Vienna (Papen), Rome (Hassell) and Tokyo (Herbert von Dirksen) were
simultaneously replaced. Finally, the insignificant Walter Funk assumed
office at the Ministry of Economics after it had been stripped of the
powers which Schacht had exercised.

Thus at a single blow Hitler succeeded in removing the few checks
which remained upon his freedom of action by using a situation not
of his making to establish a still firmer grip upon the control of policy
and the machinery of the State He had replaced Blomberg and Fritsch,
Neurath and Schacht with creatures of his own will — Keitel, Ribben-
trop and Funk — and added to the power in his own hands by assuming
direct control of the Armed Forces When put to the test the claim
of the Army to stand apart from the process of Gkichschaltmg in
the totahtarian state had proved to be hollow. Nor had the solidarity
of the Officer Corps prevented Hitler finding men who were eager enough
to serve him. The concern of the generals for the honour of their caste
had been limited to securing Blomberg’s dismissal for a mesalliance and
a court of enquiry to vindicate Fritsch. After long delays the Court
met on 11 March, only to be adjourned because of the Austrian crisis.
When it reassembled on the 17th, the regime, covered with the glory of
the Anschluss, was unassailable. Once again Hitler showed his abihty
to make use of unexpected opportunities. Fntsch’s reputation was
vindicated, but the verdict had no further consequences: he was not
reinstated in office, but retired into private life with the simple distinction
of Colonel-m-Chief of his old regiment. With that the generals were
content, and Fritsch himself acquiesced.

382

tROM \U\>\ fO

In the triumphs that foli<nvcd the Fritsch Alihir u.i' Il

marked none the less the la.t stage in the le.i.hil'.Mii after pnv.er; the
end of the Conser\ati\es’ hopes that m SduieUi, Ncau fi a-iJ FrU'ch
they still preserved some slender guarante’s again-n the e.! lessnes-. of
the Nazis, and the prelude to the new ei,i in ioreigti poia y

About nine o’chxkon the evening of 4 I cbiuarv (the day oftpe Cabinet
Meeting in Berlin) Franz von Pnpen, the 1 nchierC speei il icpiesentativc
in Vienna, was silting in his study at the Legation vv'ier (he leiephone
bell rang. It was the State Secretary, Larui lei-i, :<p...’,ii’p hum the Reich
Chancellery, with the biief aniioi-’ceinciit that Pajei;'-. iniv.ion in
Vienna was at an end and he had been recalled. La'nn^er^ regrellcd tl.al
he could give no explanation

Papon’s surprise was considerable. !v>i he had seen Hillei per.oiniliy
only the week before and nothing had then been said nboi:' ins leeall nr
transfer. The conclusion could only be that a sudden chant', c m Hitler’s
policy was imminent, and that Vienna was one of the tird |>l,.ces in
which that change would be felt.

For the past eighteen months Austro- CiernMn relations liad been
governed by the Agreement of July, The 'nteipretation of that
Agreement by the two panics, however, showed wide dilferences ol
opinion which arc rellccted in the diplomatic evchanges.' 1 he Ausliian
Government had ougmally, though mn very stuvigly, honed hut the
Agreement might serve as a final settlement of the ditllueiKcs iMween
Geimany and themwlves. The Germans, on the otlici hand, clearly
regarded it as a lever with which to exerci-e piessurc on the .\iMrians
in such a way that, in the end, Austria could be captured from mside
and the Anschluss earned out peacclully, on the initiuiivc of a Nazi-
contrcllcd government in Vienna. Once the Austrians grasped Ihi-. they
did all they could to delay and limit the application of the punisihus
to ve'hich they had been fisrced to agree, buying off the Geim.tns with
concessions and pi onuses, while desperately loohing round for assur-
ances of support m case of an attack on .Austria’s independence.

Schuschnigg’s’ loom for manoeuvre was limited, and was lediiced
still further by the creation of the Rome- Berlin Avis, if at any time he

^Cf G.D., sciios D, voi. I, cbaptei 11: Gerraanj and Austiia, July, 1936-July,
1938

'^Kuit von Sehuschmgg became Federal Chancellor ol Aui-tii,! after Dolfuss’
murder m 1934, and held the ollice until the An-, Ucs,

383

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

goaded Hitler too far by his obstinacy or evasiveness he knew perfectly
well that there was a strong underground Nazi Party in Austria, hostile
to the policy of penetration represented by Papen and itching to make a
putsch. Up to the end of 1937 Schuschnigg’s delaying tactics were not
unsuccessful, but the closer relations between Berlin and Rome were a
plain enough warning and when the Austrian police came upon
Austrian Nazi plans for the seizure of power by force in the spring of
1938 he believed that he would have to make bigger concessions than
anything he had yet agreed to. These plans were discovered during poLce
raids in Vienna on 25 and 26 January, 1938, and by the time Papen got
back from Berlin at the beginning of February he found Schuschmgg
ready to agree to his suggestion that he should meet Hitler for conver-
sations on the future of Austro-German relations.

Had Hitler known of this he v/ould in aO probability have deferred
Papen’s recall. But it was Papen himself, arriving at the Berghof to pay a
farewell visit after the diplomatic changes had been announced, who
brought the first nev/s of this development. Hitler, who had been
embarrassed up to this point, sudderdy began to show interest in what
Papen was saying, and ordered him to go back to Vienna by the next
train and resume olRce until the meeting could be arranged.

The fact that Papen’s withdrawal had already been announced was
sufficient indication to Schuschmgg that he had little time left if he was
going to persuade Hitlei not to abandon the policy of which Papen had
been the agent in favour of rougher methods of achieving the Ansch-
luss. Schuschmgg tried to safeguard himself by asking for assurances
that the Agreement of 1936 should remain the basis of Austro-German
relations in the future, and that he should be told in advance precisely
what Hitler wanted to discuss. Papen was perfectly ready to give all the
assurances Schuschmgg demanded, and urged him again to take this
last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement with the Fuehrer.

On the evening of 1 1 February Schuschnigg quietly left Vienna by
train, accompanied by his Secielary of State for Foreign Affairs, Guido
Schmidt, and the next morning was driven from Salzburg up the
mouRtam roads to the Obersalrberg. It was a cold winter morning, but
Papen, who met them at the frontier, was in the best of tempers, and
only remarked casually that he hoped Schuschnigg would not mind the
presence of one or two Geiman generals who happened to be staying
with Hitler at the Beighof. Hitler was waiting on the steps when they
arrived, and at once conducted the Austuan Chancellor into his study
for a private talk before lunch.

384

HIOM U) \>RKUU, 19.V.-1939

Scarcely had they sot drn^ii than Hiticr, biu ianj a.ide 5chiiiciini':y s
polite remarks about the \iew from his \viik1ov\, ini '•died rilw^ an a lyi.v
tirade against the whole co’.n^-^c of Austrian pulios, SdiU'Chnigyd
attempts to interrupt and defend huiHclf were diuuleJ down.

The whole histoiy of Austria [Hitler declared] 1 1 j jsl one uimni, rupte
of high treason. Thai wa^ so m the pa/t, and it is no better ioda: „ i
historical paradox must now rcaeh it^ lomt-overdue end. And I can \dl e
here and now, Herr Schuschnigg thai I am ab^oluteh dcfci mined to mal e
an end of al! this. The German Reich is one td' the fireat Powers, and nob ‘d;
will raise his voice if it settles its bouier piobnunri

Hitler rapidly worked himself into a towci mg rage. He laiked ewiledly
of his mission: 'T have achieved e\eryt!nng ihai 1 -el out to lUk and ha .e
thus become perhaps the greatest Geiman in hi^loiw A C haracterMicallv,
he began to abuse Schuschnigg for ordering defence woiks to he con-
structed on the border. This wa^ an open aflVont to Gernianv :

Listen. You doiTt rcalb think that }ou cn mo\e a he Wimc \u Au*.to
without my hearing about it the \ci> next day, do >(m? You doift sei .on -
believe that ^ou can stop me, or e\en delay nic h^r Iialfaii h^xir, do \ud A . .
After the Arni>, my S.A. and the Aiislnan Legum would move in, air
nobody can stop their just revenge— not even 1. Do you want to make m,-
olher Spam of Austria ? i would like to avoid all that, if povabiv.

Austria, Hitler sneered, was alone* I'^citbcr Fiance, nor Britain, nor
Italy would lift a finger to save her. And now his patience was e\!iau ^ cd.
Unless Schuschnigg was prcpaied to agree, at once, io ali that Le
demanded, he would settle matter'^ by foice.

Think it ovci, Heir Schuschn.cg, think P ov^r wdl I can Oidy wail unld
this afternoon. If I tell you that, you will Oo well to taK‘ mv woids hlcuijiv.
I don't believe in blulling. All my past is pnjofof that.

For the moment, however, I iiilci stud nothing of whai his demands w'crc.
After this tirade, which lasted fur two hours, nc suddenly broke olTiOul
led his guest m to lunch. Throughout the meal he was charm itself, hut
the presence of the gcneials at the table did not escape the Aiistnaiwd
notice.

After iuiich Hiller excused hioiseli and left Schuschnigg and Schnidt
to a desultoiy convcisaiion with the other guests, while he went oh io
talk to one of the Austrian Na^i leaders, Muhlinann, and Keppler

^ The following account is taken from ku»t von SHuischniys' tiislmm PitiUkm
(London, 1947), pages 19-32 Although SHiuschnigg’s account of IhcLtsiMTsatioji
wiitten down Liter hom men ion , and does not claim to he an exact sccord of ilitier's
words, ali the other evidence conhrms that it gives vi subslantidily accuiiile picture of
what was said at the Beighof cm 12 Lchuiaiy.

L.H.— N

385

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

(Hitler’s agent in Austria), whose visit had been well timed to coincide
with that of the Austrian Chancellor.

In the middle of the afternoon Schuschnigg was taken to see Ribben-
trop and Papen. They presented him with a draft of Hitler’s demands.
They were far-reaching in their scope. The Austrian Government was
to recognize that National Socialism was perfectly compatible with
loyalty to Austria, and even to Schuschnigg’s Patriotic Front, so
long as the Nazis confoimed to the Austrian Constitution. Seyss-
Inquart, a “respectable” crypto-Nazi, was to be appointed Minister of
the Interior, with control of the police and the right to see that Nazi
activity was allowed to develop along the lines indicated. An amnesty
for all imprisoned Nazis was to be proclaimed witliin three days, and
Nazi officials and officers who had been dismissed were to be reinstated
m their posts. To assure close relations between the German and
Austrian Armies there was to be a systematic exchange of officers. Finally,
the Austrian economic system was to be assimilated to that of Germany,
and another Nazi nominee, Fischboek, appointed Minister of Finance.^

Schuschnigg’s efforts to secure alterations in the draft, other than
minor changes, were unavailing. It was, Ribbentrop warned him.
Hitler’s last word ; he must accept all the clauses or take the consequences.
When the Austrian Chancellor saw Hitler a little later he found him in
the same intransigent mood: there was nothing to be discussed, not a
word could be changed. When Schuschnigg explained that, although
willing to sign, he could not, by the Austrian Constitution, guarantee
ratification, or the observance of the time limit for the amnesty, Hitler
flung open the door and, turning Schuschnigg out, shouted for General
Keitel.

The reason for the presence of the generals now became clear. In his
diary General Jodi records: “General Keitel asks Admiral Canaris and
myself to come to his apartment. He tells us that the Fuehrer’s order is
to the effect that military pressure shamming military action should be
kept up until the 15th.”

A day later he adds : “The effect is quick and strong. In Austria the
impression is created that Germany is undertaking serious military
preparations.”-

Another captured document gives the actual directive issued by Keitel
—the recall of the German imlitary attache in Vienna, the assembly of

^ Draft protocol in G D , D t. No. 294.

* The diary of Geneial Jodi, who was Quef of the Operations Staff in the O K.W.;
N D. 17S0-PS.

386

FROM VltNMA TO FRVOLL, !y3.S-lV.l9

rolling-stock, manoeuvres on the Austrian t’roiitjer and :1 'k“ .rn-c^^ding uf
rumours by Gennan agents.^

Schuschnigg knew nothing of this at the time, but the eiihvt <.f the
summons to Keitel was well calculated. Schmidt leriiarLed tu tii*
Chancellorthat hewould not bcsurpriiedifthcy were unestc-' 'u siicne ..
five minutes. Half an hour later, howeser. Hitler again sent f n Schu ...n-
nigg. “I have decided to change m\ mind,” he told him. "bor ihc tir.i
time in my life. But I warn you — tho is your rciy last ciiaiice. 1
given you three more days before the Agieemc.’U goes m<o eli'cct.'’

This was the limit of Hitler’s concessions, and the \u .trian C’i.'incello ■
had little option but to sign.- With that Hitler began to calm down and
talk more normally. Only when they discussed the cciniinimquc to be
issued to the Press did his suspicion flare up again. Suui .'.hoigg ..sked
for the promised confirmation of the 1936 .Agreement, hut iiitici
sharply retorted: “Oh, no! First you have to fultil the conditions of om
Agreement. This is what is going to the Press: ‘Tod iv tlie Fuchrei and
Reich Chancellor conferred with the Austrian I’haiicellur at tiic
Berghof.’ That’s all.”

To this, too, Schuschnigg had perforce to agree. His one anxiety now
was to get away. He declined Hitler’s invitation to stay to a late supper.
The Austrians were silent as they drove down towards Sabburg, bat
Papen was still in the best of tempers. "Well, now,” he remarked to
Schuschnigg, “you have seen what the Fuehrer can be like at times. But
the next time I am sure it will be different. You know, the Fuehrer c.ui
be absolutely charming.”

Just twenty-four hours after they had arrived at Subburg the Austrian
Chancellor’s train set out again for Vienna. Up at the Berghof tlie
Fuehrer relaxed: it had been a highly succc.ssful day.

Mussolini described the interval between the Beiehtesgaden inteiview
and the Anschluss as that between the fourth and fifth acts of the
Austrian tragedy. Hitler had not altered his course. On Saturday,
26 February he saw live leading Austrian Nazis, who were ordered to
remain in Germany.

The Fuehrer stated lh.tt in the Austrian problem he h id to indicate a
different course for the Party, as the Austrian question could neier be solieJ
by a revolution. There remained only two possibilities ; force, or ev olutionary
* N.D. 177S-PS. “ Text of final protocol in G.D., D.l, No. 295.

387

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

means. He wanted the evolutionary course to be taken, whether or not the
possibility of success could today be foreseen. The Protocol signed by
Schuschnigg was so far-reaching that, if completely carried out, the Austrian
problem would be automatically solved. He did not now desire a solution
by violent means, if it could at all be avoided, since the danger for us m
the field of foreign policy became less each year and our military power
greater.”^

But if Hitler had not changed his mind about the character of the
policy to be pursued he certainly expected the Berchtesgaden meeting to
hasten events, and German reports from Vienna in the month following
show an impatient preoccupation with the possibility of Schuschnigg’s
and Austria’s collapse. Immediately after his appointment as Austrian
Minister of the Interior, Seyss-Inquart left for Berlin to get his orders,
and when Schuschnigg attempted to rally Austrian opinion by a speech
on 24 February the Nazis in Styria stormed Graz Town Hall and hoisted
the swastika.

Seyss-Inquart was beginning to act more and more independently of
the Chancellor, and the Austrian Nazis were already boasting that
within a matter of weeks, if not of days, they would be in the saddle and
give Austria a taste of the whip.

At the end of the first week of March Schuschnigg reached a point
where he felt that, if he stood aside inactive any longer, the Austrian
Government would cease to be master in its own house. He resolved
upon a desperate expedient which, he hoped, would destroy the strongest
argument Hitler had so far used — ^that a majority of the Austrian people
were in favour of an Anschluss with Germany. On the evening of 8
March he detenmned to hold a plebiscite on Sunday, 13 March, in which
the Austiian people should be invited to declare whether they were in
favour of an Austria which was free and independent, German and
Christian.

Schusclinigg had been revolving such a step in his mind since the end
of February Mussolini, who had been sounded out the day before
(7 March) by Colonel Liebitzky, the Austrian military attache in Rome,
had returned the answer "Ce un errone" (That’s a mistake). Schusch-
nigg, however, once he had made up his mind, persisted with an ob-
stinate, if blind, courage He was quite right in thinking that a plebiscite
would thiow Hitler’s plans awry, but Hitler possessed an even stronger
argument than self-determinat' on— that offeree. The Hungarian Foreign
Minister, Kanya, who visited Vienna at the beginning of March, might
assure Schuschnigg that Hitler was bluffing, but it was a dangerous
* Memorandum by Wilhelm Keppler, who was present. G.D., D.I, No. 328.

388

{■ROM \nSNA T(l Rf'Afiir, 193S-i*j'^9

game to call his blulTwhtn ail the caid'. v\crein hi'' hand, and isc had o'*.Iy
to put them on the tabic to take the trick.

The news of the plebiscite wti' ‘'low in re.ictii"".' Hil'er, v.'.'i d‘ c-, ra l
appear to have been informed until ihcaittnnHui ofy M utii. I ii.u 'ji...
evening Schuschniggmude the ofli.'ial anni'tinceritciit to a meetmc nt'the
Patriotic Front at Innsbruck. While Schuiciinigg v.i's speaking in ihe
Tyrol urgent summons weie sent out from Deilin Hakr Aa-. funu'is that
Schuschnigg should try to obstruct him lU t!ii-< wav, bid he had beer
taken by surprise and nothing was p.epared for ‘>jck a.n eve.'tualily.
Goering and Keitel were at once calk-d to the C hancclleiy. (jcneral von
Reichcnau was summoned back fioin a meeting of l.k' > kvmpst Cianics
Committee in Cairo, and Gloise-Horsleisaa, one of t!,e crypto-Na/'
Ministers in Schuschnigg’s Government, who happenu! to he in tl •.
Palatinate, was rushed lo lierlin. Ribbenliop vas in l.undo’. and
Neurath had to be brought back to dcputi/e for him at the i oreigit
Office.

Thursday, 10 Maich, was the da> of decisions. L.ily in the nuirning
Wilhelm Keppler, Hiller's special envoy for AU'liion affair'', and (ilob-
otcnik, one of the Austrian Na/i leaders reached Bcihii 1 y a,r vsdi tlie
latest news from Vienna. Between eleven o’chick and one o'clock
Hitler discussed military plans for the invadon of Aii-.lim: il the .Anm
was to cross the frontier by Satuiday— the plebscte was Used foi
Sunday-— orders must go out that evening, and to this ll-dci agreed
The question that most preoccupied him was Mussolini's icaction to
the news that the German Army v as about to march ovei the Aistrian
frontier. Ciano had not disguised Italian annoyance at the fact that the
Berchtesgaden meeting of 12 February bad been sprung on Italy without
any notice, and there were signs of an Anglo \vJ\dn rappiochancnt
which worried Hitler. At noon, therefore, Hitler sent otTPiiiice Philip
of Hesse to the Duce with a letter which he Iiad instructions to delivci
personally.

The letter began with an argument which was so imconvinci.ig that
the Germans later secuied its omissicn when the text was published-
the argument that Austria had been con‘'pinng with the C’/echs, m cider
to restore the Hapsburgs and “to throw the Wvight of a ma'.s of at least
twenty million men against Germany if iieces-.'.'y.” Hitler then con-
tinued on more familiar ground, the onpre.'ion of the Gcimans in
Austria by their own government. Both complaints, he said -Austria's
designs against Germany and llie maltiealment of the Mational-nimded
majority m Austria — he bad presented forcd'u'ly to Sduischmgg at

389

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Berchtesgaden. Schuschnigg had then promised changes. With these
assurances Hitler had been content, but Schuschnigg had broken his
promise. Now, at last, the Austrian people were rising against their
oppressors, and Austria was being brought to a state of anarchy. He
could no longer remain passive in face of his responsibilities as Fuehrer
of the German Reich and as a son of Austrian soil.

1 am now deteimmed to restore law and order in my homeland, and enable

the people to decide their own fate according to their judgment in an

unmistakable, clear and open manner. . . .

I now wish solemnly to assure Your Excellency, as the Duce of Fascist

Italy;

(1) Consider this step only as one of national self-defence. . . . You, too.
Excellency, could not act differently if the fate of Italians w'ere at
stake. . . .

(2) In a critical hour for Italy I proved to you the steadfastness of my
sympathy. Do not doubt that m the future there will be no change
m this respect.

(3) Whatever the consequences of the coming events may be, I have drawn
a definite boundary between Germany and France and now draw one
just as definite between Italy and us. It is the Brenner. This decision will
never be questioned or changed.^

While Philip of Hesse was flying south with this message, and the
orders for mobilization were beginmng to go out, in Vienna all was
quiet. Seyss-Inquart saw Schuschnigg, but, lacking orders from Berlin,
could do no more than agree to the plebiscite and try to gain time. Not
until the evening did Globotcnik return from Berlin with the news that
, Hitler was in a fury and had rejected the plebiscite; but he brought no
instructions, and could only tell Seyss-Inquart that he would get a letter
by courier the next morning.

In the course of the night 10-11 March Hitler gave his orders to
Glaise-Horstenau, the Austrian Cabinet Minister who was still waiting
in Berlin, and packed him off to Vienna by plane. At two o’clock in the
morning Directive No. 1 for Operation Otto was issued. It contained
six paragraphs over Hitler’s signature:

(1) If other measures prove unsuccessful, I mtend to invade Austria with
armed forces m order to establish constitutional conditions and to
pievcnt further outrages against the pro-German population.

(2) The whole operation will be diiected by myself. . . .

The forces detailed must be ready on 12 March (Saturday) at the latest
from 1200 hours. I reserve the right to decide the actual moment for

390

1G.D., D.I,No. 352.

FROM ViLNNi.V 10 iyib-i 'i'J

invasion. The behaviour of the troops mu't jne thw .np- > o : ;iial •,> >

do not want to wage war against our An ilrlan iirolh

On the remaining German frontiers no sccui.'/ nui.u v, ,e to he
taken for the time being.'

By the time Hitler went to bed caiiy on the mi'irnnio n' I i \! .te'i
Army trucks and tanks were already beji.ini'''j to r.d! i!..‘

bombers to fly in to the Bavarian airfie!d>

The same morning, in t!tc Chancelior’s flat in Vier.'M, the itiephori.
woke Schuschnigg from his sleep at half p.. .t ii , o. i he { iicf r.f Folis^
Skubl, was on the line: the German bolder at Sa? .burg hod been clo e..
an hour before, and all rail truflio between the two tivi'tui

The Chancellor dressed and dio\^ through the snil dark '■iiee'- to ea.l;
Mass at St. Stephen’s Cathedul. At the Cluaiceilerv ti.e • u..e. ueu
deserted, and as Sehusehnigg looked out I'f the window .c vuiSehed
people in the streets hurrying to their job. unconscious of wh.it wa.
already in train on the fur side of the frontier.

There were other early risers in Vienna that morning. At daw n Papcii
left by air for Berlin, and not long afierwards the Auslnan Mn . ,ler of
the Interior, Seyss-lnquart, was to be >eeti ssalking up and du\,'i at the
airport waiting for the promised message from Hi ier. It Vus bronglu
by Glaise-Horslenau, and at half past nine the two Minister^ called
on the Chancellor to present Hitler’s demands: t’.ie original p!ebi,cite
must be cancelled and replaced by another to be held in thiee veeks’
time. For two hours the three men argued to and fro, bm re lelicJ no
conclusion. At half past eleven Seyss-lnquart and Ghti-c-liorsT-aau
went off to a meeting with the leaders of the Austiian N. n Paiuy. Afui
lunch they returned to the Chancellery and again saw Svhus.hnigg. 1 nc
Chancellor, who had in the meaniimc been with PrcHden: Mi! !,is, told
them he agreed to the postponement of the plebiscite. But b> uow' tlie
German demands were being raised. At 2.4:' p.m. Getcnag began a
series of telephone calls from Berlin to Vienna which conunued unal
late in the evening, and the transcripts of vviiidi, prepared by Cocrii'g\
own Foischungsamt (Research Department), are among the mo't
dramatic of the documents captured after the vw.r.'

Having secured the abandonment of the plebiscite, Cjoermg iu>w ca!Iv.d
for the resignation of Sciuisehnigg. When that was agictd to in the
middle of the afternoon, he demanded the appointment t>f Se> '-s-i nqaai t.
But here the Nazis encountered an unexpected obstacle in the \iislrian
President, Miklas, who stubbornly refused to male Seyss-inquait
^N.D,C-102. ' N.D. 2y4'J-l'S.

391

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Chancellor, and kept up his resistance until shortly before midnight.
Keppler, who had arrived from Berhn in the afternoon, and promptly
set up an improvised office in the Chancellery, went to see the President,
accompanied by the German Military Attache, General Muff. Keppler
had brought the list of Seyss-Inquart’s Ministers with him from Berlin;
he threatened invasion if the President would not agree, but still Miklas
held out.

At half past five an angry Goermg, roaring down the wire from Berlin,
demanded to speak to Seyss-Inquart:

Look here, you go immediately together with Lieutenant-General Muff and
tell the Federal President that, if the conditions which are known to you are
not accepted immediately, the troops already stationed at the frontier will

move m tonight along the whole line, and Austria will cease to exist Tell

him there is no time now for any joke. . . . The mvasion will be stopped and
the troops held at the border only if we are informed by 7.30 that Miklas
has entrusted you with the Federal Chancellorship. . . . Then call out the
National Socialists all over the country. They should now be in the streets.
So, remember, we must have a report by 7.30. If Miklas could not under-
stand in four hours, we shall make him understand now m four minutes.

As the evening drew on, an excited mob filled the Inner City and surged
round the Chancellery. On the stairs and in the corridors Schuschnigg
noticed unfamiliar figures with swastika armbands, saluting each other
with outstretched arms and pushing their way unceremoniously in and
out of the offices. Shortly after half past seven Schuschnigg broadcast
to the nation the news that Germany had delivered an ultimatum, and
rebutted the lie that civil war had broken out in Austria. The President
still refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor, and neither Keppler
nor Muff could shake him.

Some time after eight o’clock Goermg rang up again. If Schuschnigg
had resigned, he told Muff, Seyss-Inquart should regard himself as still
m office and entitled to carry out necessary measures in the name of the
Government. If anyone objected or attempted to resist they would have
to face a German court-martial by the invading troops. With Seyss-
Inquart technically in office the faqade of legality could be preserved.
This was all that was needed. When Keppler telephoned to Beilin
shoitly before 9 pm. to report that Seyss-Inquart was acting as in-
stiucted, Goering replied:

Listen. You aiethe Government now. Listen carefully and take notes. The
following telegram should be sent here to Berlin by Seyss-Inquart:

“The provisional Austrian Government, which, after the dismissal of the
Schuschnigg Government, considers it its task to establish peace and order
392

FROM VII NNA TO PP \(,1 : . r)?'-1039

in Austria, sends Id the Oeimai. (>. , ij,,:. R ti » in a rc.ji'. io
support It m its task and to he’p it r-n.M at a; ns. So t! . j a; pa x-
it asks tlic German Go’.ernnienl to v ’.i tj..irni!i ':i i-, * on ,t

possible.”

Goering added a few more iiiNtrueln'r-.. Ses w,.s ’a- ji. '!i a

government from the names on the !nI e’t irum iteusn; (D e'aH'’-
ow'n brother-in-law was to get *he Mill! ni) s'f.bM!te ii.ei: n lie > were
to be watched, to present people getting to the Icl.g „!ir

Well, he does not even h.isc to iCml the K.ee.am il. he to do is to
say: Agreed.

An hour later Keppicr telephoned Bcihn aga'n: •‘lei! tn. (lenera!
Field-Marshal that Scyss-Inquurt agree
Throughout the country the local Na/h were .iheads ^e./.ag towi'
halls and gosernment offices. To tiieir anger ;!ie> hail heer? l.neeK
excluded from the deceive esents in the Charieclleiy. wf.ere ihe priiK.pal
parts were played by Hitler's agenl, keiyplei, by i.ne (i iinan nniilaiy
attache, General Muff, and by Se\is-lnquari. a feliow-iiaveller long
regarded with dislike by the lrue-1'lue Na/is o: the illegal Pally. None
the less, by the threat of a se./ure of power by foiec. whu Ii wa . niiplu it
in the noisy mob filling the street outside the Chamelieiy, they siu.iii-
buted to the atmospheie of compabion befote wliicli in the end ihe
President had to yield.

A little befote midnight President Mikia . capilul.'.tcii: to r' oid blootl-
shed and in the hope of secuiing at least tlie shadow of Am (U.i:i inde-
pendence, he nominated Se\‘-s-hiquart as I'eilera! rhaneelloi i tf AiMria.
At two o'clock in the morningi General Mulf lang up Berlm uikI, at
Seyss-lnquart's request, asked that the Geiman poops should be halted
at the frontier. It was too iats'. .An appeal to Hitlei was lurned down:
the occupation must g<' on.

The time marked on Hitler’s order to maicii is 2t)4^ hours, 1 1 March,
which suggests that Hitler had already signed it befoie Goesing finished
dictating the faked telegram to A'ienna between K.48 and N 54 p.m. The
hour for cro'-smg llie frontier was fixed at daybreak on Saturday,
the 12th. Before then Hitler had received the message he h.id been
waiting for all day— news from Rom.-. When Piinee Philip tang up at
10.25 pm. on the night iif 11 Maieh. il was Hiilei, not Cnicring, who
came to th.e telephone.

Hesse. I have just conic back fiom the Pala/zo Vene/ia. Ihe Uuce acccpled

the whole thing in a very friendly mannci. He ''ends you his legards

I/itIcr- Then please tell Mussolini I will never foigct bun foi Ihis.

L.H — .S*

393

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Hesse: Yes.

Hitler: Never, never, never, whatever happens As soon as the Austrian

affair is settled, I shall be ready to go with him, through thick and thin,
no matter what happens.

Hesse. Yes, my Fuehrer.

Hiller. Listen, I shall make any agreement— I am no longer in fear of the
teriible position which would have existed mihtarily m case w'e had got into
a conflict. You may tell him that I thank him ever so much; never, never
shall I forget.

Hesse: Yes, my Fuehrer.

Hitler: I will never forget, whatever may happen. If he should ever need any
help or be in any danger, he can be convinced that I shall stick to him,
whatever may happen, even if the whole world were against him.

Hesse: Yes, my Fuehrer.’-

With that load off his mind Hitler was content to leave Goering to
take over the direction of affairs in Berlin, The Field-Marshal had kept
a thousand distinguished guests waiting for an hour at a sumptuous
reception in the Haus der Flieger, where the State Opera ballet was to
dance. No sooner had he arrived and taken his seat than he scribbled
on his programme; “Immediately the music is over I should like to talk
to you, and will explain everything to you.” The note was passed to the
British Ambassador.^ A little later a stormy interview between the two
men followed in Goering’s private room, but Henderson’s protests were
futile. As he himself remarks, the only point that mattered was that
German troops and aeroplanes were already crossing the frontier.

The British Ambassador was not the only diplomat Goering saw that
night. When the Czech Minister, Dr. Mastny, arrived at the reception
he was shown straight to Goering’s room. The Field-Marshal was only
too eager to reassure him: what was happening in Austria would have
no effect at all on Germany’s relations with Czechoslovakia. “I give
you ray word of honour that Czechoslovakia has nothing to fear from
the Reich.” In return he asked for assurances that Czechoslovakia would
not mobilize. Mastny left at once to ring up Prague, and Goering went
in to join his guests. After he had finished talking to Henderson, the
Czech Minister returned. He had spoken to the Czech Foreign Minister
himself: in Prague they were appreciative of the German goodwill and
gave a definite promise that the Czech Army would not be mobilized.
Goering was delighted and reiterated the undertaking he had already
given, this time in the name of the German Government.

By noon on the 12th Hitler was with General Keitel at the H.Q. of
the 8th Aimy. A proclamation broadcast to the German nation con-
’ N.D., 2949-PS. “ Sir N. Henderson. Failiiie of a Mission, pages 124-5.

394

FK.OM VIENNA TO PR\GUl, I9.'*..-!939

tained a long indictment of the opprcv.nc nn .j-uverLineKl of Austria
and an eloquent account of Hitler’s restraint in trsiiiir t<’ leacli a scitk”
ment with Vienna. The plan to hold a plebiscite, under ti'rditions in
which there could be no security for freedom or mipartaiijt}, wai tfie
last straw. The Fuehrer had decided to liberate Austri.t and to come io
the help of these brother Gennans m distress.’

Shortly after lunch Hitler himself crossed tiic frontier, and drtne
through decorated villages into the crowded, cheering streets of Lin/.
There, in the town in which he had once gone to school, he wsis met by
the two Austrian Ministers, Seyss-lnquarl and Gktise-Horstenau. Iii
the background was Himmler, who had already \ isued Vienna the night
before to put the machinery of the GiMupo and S.S. into operalion and
begin the arresis.

Hitler was in an excited mood: he had come lionic at last. I lie next
day he went out to lay a wreath on his parents’ grasc at Lconding. lo
Mussolini he sent a telegram; “1 shall never forget this. .Adoif Hitler.”
To the crowds he declared:

When years ago I went forth from this town 1 boic within me piecisely the
same profession of faith which today fills my heart. Judge of the depth of
my emotion when, after so many years, Iliave been aNc to bimgliiat
profession of faith to its fulfilment. If Providence once called me forth fruiii
this town to be the leader of the Reich, it must, m so doing, have charged
me with a mission, and that mission could be only to restoie my dear
homeland to the German Reich. 1 have believed in tins mission, I have lived
and fought for it, and 1 believe 1 have now fullilleii i*.’

That night Hitler spent in Linz, while Seyss-Inquait returned by car
to Vienna. So far no decision had been taken about the future < if .Austria,
and it seems to have been under the inllucpce of the enthusiastic recep-
tion he found in Linz that Hitler decided on the actual annexation.
Next morning, the Sunday on which the ill-fated plebiscite was to have
been held, one of Hitler’s State Secretaries, Stuckart, flew to Vienna
to place Hitler’s plan before the new Austrian Government. The
terms in which the suggestion was framed admitted of only one answer.
A Cabinet meeting was hurriedly summoned, and when Scyss-Inquarl
reached Linz again late on the night of the 13th he was able to present
the Fuehrer with the text of a law already promulgated, the first article
of which read; “Austria is a province of the German Reich.”" Hitler was
deeply moved. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he turned to his coiii-

> Text in Baynes, vol. II, pages 1, 4 16-21.

Speech at Linz, 12 March, 1938, Baynes: vol. II, pages 1,422-23.

“ Full text m G.D., D.I, No. 374.

395

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

panions with the remark: “Yes, a good political action saves blood.”^
The same night the arrests began: in Vienna alone they were to total
seventy-six thousand.-

All day on the 13lh crowds waited in Vienna for the Fuehrer to make
his triumphant entry into the capital. It was not until the afternoon of
Monday, the 14th, that he finally arrived. Among the reasons for the
delay were Himmler’s dissatisfaction with the security arrangements
and, to Hitler’s fury, the breakdown of a great part of the German
mechanized and motorized troops on the road.'’* When Hitler reached
Vienna he was not in the best of tempers; he stayed only one night and
then flew back to Munich. Yet the huge crowds filling the Heldenplatz
and the Ring, the reception in the Hapsburgs’ palace of the Hofburg,
the element of personal triumph in his return to the city which had
rejected him — all this must have given him deep satisfaction. Once he
had cursed his generals and recovered his temper this sense of satis-
faction, even of exaltation, is to be found in the speeches of the election
campaign which followed. Foi Austria was to have its plebiscite after
all, a plebiscite in which not only Austria but the whole of Greater
Germany was to take part, this time under Nazi auspices.

When he presented his report to the Reichstag on 18 March Hitler
announced the dissolution of the Reichstag and new elections for 10
.\pril, appealing for another four years of power to consolidate the gams
of the new Gross- Deutschland.

In the couise of the electoral campaign Hitler travelled from end to
end of Germany. In the first ten days of April he moved to Austria and
visited Graz, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Linz, with a closing
demonstration at Vienna on the 9th. To the Burgomaster of Vienna he
said: “Be assuicd that this city is m my eyes a pearl. I will bring it into
that setting which is worthy of it and I will entrust it to the care of the
of the whole German nation.”*

As he stood there, master of this city in which he had starved in
obscurity, heir to the Hapsburgs his father had served as a customs
officer, the belief in his mission, and in himself as the Man of Destiny,
swelled within him.

* Memorandum by Seyss-lnquait, 9 September, 1945, N D 3254-PS.

-Figures given by Seyss-Inqiiuit’s Counsel at Nuremberg, N.P,, part XIX, page
165.

“At Nuremberg General Jodi stated that seventy per cent of all armoured vehicles
and cars were stranded on the roads tiom Salzburg and Passau to Vienna; N P ,
part XV, page 323 General Gudeiian, who commanded the armoured troops,
denies this; cf. Heinz Guderian; Panzer Leader (London, 1952), pages 53-6.

FROM VHWA TO PRAC.Lf, 1938-1939

In three days the Lord has smitten them. . . . And to 111*.* j?rncc wfls
on ihe day of the betrayal to be abL to un^tc niy h.mijUnd \uili die
Reicli* , , , i woiilu no\\ give thanks to Him who iel me letiini lo m> homc-
land m onicr that I might now lead jt into rn> CiCiHian Rcscil Toniorrov^
may e\er> German recognize the horn, auU measure its .mpori and bow m
humilit} before the AIni«ght> who ni a few v.eeks his wroaglil a mirdck
upon usd

Under the Nazi system of voting there was no mom for surprisev -
99-OS per cent voted their approval of hb actions; in Austiiu the figum
was higher still: 99 75. *‘For incA Hider told t!ic Press, "liiis is the
proudest hour of m> hfed'-

Tm union of Austria with Gennanv was ihe fuliilnieiU of a (icnnin
dream older than the Treaiv oi' VcrsaiHc-., wtsich had speuiiea!!)
forbidden it, or even than the unifiaitivei of Cicrnriny, from which
Bismarck had dchbciateK excluded Austria. With the dissolution of the
Ilapsbuig Monarchy at the end of the vwir many Austrians saw in such
a union with Gcrimin} the onK future for a State which, shorn of the
non-Gcrman provinces of the old Limpirc, appeared lo he left hanging
111 the air. Austria’s none too happy experience in the po>t-vvar world,
including grave economic problems like unempkamept, added force
to this argument. !f the rise of Nazism in Germany diiiiinishcd Austrian
enthusiasm for an Amchlms, yet the pull ol' sentiment, laiigangc aiuf
histoiy, reinforced by the malena! adViUitagcs idTercd by becoming pait
of a big nation, was strong enough lo awaken genuine wdconic when the
froniier baniers went uown and liic Geiman troops niaidicd in,
gai landed With Ikmcis. For months, even years, Austria had been living
in a state of inseciiniva no one could see where SchuschniggN policy of
independence was to lead, and Iheie wa^ a widespread sense of lehef,
even among liiosc who were far from being Nazis, that the tension was
at an end, and that what had appeared inevitable had happened at last,
peacefiiHy, Moreover, the Austrian Na/i Party had attiactcJ a con-
siderable following before 193K. Vienna, where the Jews had played a
iiioie bniliani part than in almost any other European city, was an old
centre of anli-Stniiiism, and in provinces like Siyna Nazism made a
powcifiil appeal.

^ Closing speech of the campaign ul Vienna, 9 Apiil, 1938; Ba>iics. vof, II, pages
1,457-8.

» AVk/iv/xw/, 11 Apiil, 1938,

397

CH^^•CLLLOR, 1933-1939

Disillusionment was not slow to come. The Austrian Legion returned
from Gennany with the two ideas of grabbing jobs and taking their
revenge ; some of the worst anti-Semitic excesses took place in Vienna,
and many who had welcomed the Anschluss were shocked by the charac-
teristic Nazi mixture of arrogance and ignorance, a r6gime of petty
terrorism tempered by corruption. Even Austrian Nazis were soon to
complain at the shameless way in which the new province was plundered.
Vienna was relegated to the position of a provincial town and the his-
torical traditions of Austria obliterated. For most Austrians the gilt
had worn off the gingerbread long before the Russian campaign began
to take its toll of Austrian regiments.

None the less, in 1938 Hitler had a plausible case to argue v/hen he
claimed that the Anschluss was only the application of the Wilsonian
principle of self-determination, even if he was prepared to run the risk
of war rather than allow a plebiscite to be held in Austria under any
other auspices than his own. Those outside Austria who wanted to lull
their anxieties to sleep again could shrug their shoulders and say it was
inevitable — after all, the Austrians were Germans, and Hitler himself
an Austrian. The Left found additional consolation in the thought that
Schuschnigg, like Dolfuss before him, represented a Clerical-Fascist
regime which had fired on the Vienna workers in February, 1934. The
German Government strongly denied the story of an ultimatum, and
played up the argument that Hitler’s action alone had saved Austria
from becoming another Spam in the heart of Europe. The bulwark
against Bolshc\ism had been strengthened.

In Rome Mussolini made the best of a bad job and shouted down
Italian doubts by loudly proclaiming the value and strength of the Axis.
In Warsaw Goering had been the guest of Colonel Beck only a fortnight
before: as they walked into dinner they passed an engraving of John
Sobieski, the Polish king coming to the relief of the besieged city of
Vienna m 1683 Beck drev/ Gocring’s attention to the title: “Don’t
worry,’’ he remarked, “that incident will not recur.”^ In London and
Pans there was uneasiness, but reluctance to draw too harsh conclusions.
The French reaffirmed their obligations to the Czechs, but Mr. Chamber-
lain, though indignant at Hitler’s action in Austria, refused to consider
giving a British guarantee to Czechoslovakia, or to France in support
of her obligations under the Franco-Czech Alliance. When Russia
proposed a Four-Power Conference to discuss means of preventing

^ The incident was recounted by Goenng to one of the American interrogation
team after the war, Dc Witt C. Poole, who records it m “Light on Nazi Foreign
Policy” Fmcisn Affairs, October, 1946, vol. 25, No. 1, pages 130-54.

398

IROM VIENNA 10 PK-VC.LL, 1938-1939 \

further aggression, the British Prime Minister deciined. Such actioft^
he told the House of Commons on 24 March, would aggrasate the div*
isions of Europe into two blocs. He strongly depiecated the talk offeree
being used; it could only increase the feeling of insecurity, .Mr. C'luimber-
lain had not yet abandoned that hope of a settlement with the Diitatori
which had led him to sacrifice Mr. Eden a month before.

Yet those who, like Mr. Chureliiii, saw in the annexation of Aubtru
a decisKe change in the European balance of power and the unfolding
of a calculated programme of aggression weie to be proseri right. The
acquisition of V.enna, for centuries regarded as the gateway to South-
eastern Europe, placed the German Army on the edge i.f the Hungarian
plain and at the threshold of the Balkans. To the south Gennanj now
had a common fiontier with Italy and Yugodasia, no more th.in fifiy
miles from the Adriatic. To the north Hitler wai in a position to oulllank
Czechoslovakia's defence-) and press her from three diicctions at once.
Germany's stiategic position, if Hitler was b.nt on a campaign of con-
quest, had been immeasurably improved. Nor was the contribution of
Austria’s economic rc.sources in iron, steel and magnesite to be dis-
regarded.

The execution of the T/oc/ikw, it is true, had been hastily improvised,
in answer to a situation Hitler had not foreseen, but such a step had
always been one of his first objectives in foreign policy, and tic ease
with which it had been accomplished was bound to tempt him to move
on more rap'dly to the achievement of the ne.xt. Every step Hitler had
taken in foreign policy since 1933 had borne an increased lisk, and
every time he had been successful in his gamble. The telephone conversa-
tion with Philip of Hesse on the night of 1 ! March is sufficient evidence
of the anxicty he felt at the possibility of foiCign intervention. To his
astonishment and delight this time there had not even been a special
session of the League of Nations to rebuke him. The door to further
successful adventures appeared to be already half-open, needing only a
vigorous kick to swing it right back.

His experience in the Austrian affair, therefore, confirmed Hitler in the
conclusions he had already reached at the end of 1937. German arma-
ments were now increasing at a much more rapid rate. On 1 April, 1938,
according to General Jodi’s testimony at Nuremberg, twenty-seven or
twenty-eight divisions w'Cie ready; by the late autumn of 1938, including
reserve divisions, this figure had grown to fifty-five divisions.' Expendi-
ture on rearmament was mounting by leaps and bounds. In the fiscal

' N.P., part XV. pagCi 368-9.

399

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

year 1935"‘i936 Germany had spent 6-2 milliard marks; in 1936-1937
tea milliard; in 1937-1938 14-6 milliard. In the year 1938-1939 the figure
rose to sixteen milliard.^

This increase in German military strength could be foreseen. It did not
yet amount to military supremacy in Europe, but taken with the fears,
disunity and weakness of the opposition — ^those psychological factors to
which lie always attached the greatest importance — Hitler calculated
that by the autumn of 1938 he would be m a position to press home his
next demands with an even greater chance of success. Certainly such a
course involved risks, as his generals continued to urge, but his whole
career so far encouraged him to take such risks, and since the reorgan-
ization of 4 February he was m a stronger position to override the doubts
of the Army. Ten days after the result of the plebiscite on Austria had
been announced, therefore, on 21 April, Hitler sent for General Keitel
and set his Staff to work out new plans for aggression.

There was no doubt where Hitler would turn next. He had hated the
Czechs since his Vienna days, when they had appeared to him as the
very type of those Slav Untcrmenschen — “sub-humans” — who were
challenging the supremacy of the Germans in the Hapsburg Monarchy.
The Czechoslovak State, created by the Peace Settlement, was the
symbol of Versailles — democratic in character, a strong supporter of the
League of Nations, the ally of France and of Russia. The Czech Army, a
first-class force, backed by the famous Skoda armaments works and
provided with defences comparable with the Maginot Line in strength,
was a factor which had to be eliminated before he could move eastwards.
For the Bohemian quadnlaicrai is a natural defensive position of almost
unequalled stategic value in the heart of Central Europe, within less than
an hour’s flying time from Berlin, and a base from which, in the event of
war, heavy blows could be dealt at some of the most important German
industrial centres. As he had already insisted at the conference of
November, 1937, the annexation of Czechoslovakia, after that of
Austria, was the second necessary step in the development of his
programme for securing Germany’s futuie.

The Czechs had few illusions about their German neighbours. They
had done their best to build up theii own defences and to buttress their
independence by alliances with France and Russia. On paper this meant
that any attack on Czechoslovakia must inevitably lead to general war.
Paradoxically, however, this was a fact in Hitler’s favour: it meant that

^ Figures given m T/ie World m March, 1939, edited by Arnold Toynbee and Frank
Ashton-Gwatkin (London, 1952), Appendix II : German Expenditure on Armaments.

402

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

France and Great Britain, in their anxiety to avoid wan were prepared to
go to great lengths to prevent the Czechs invoking the guarantees they
had been given*

The value of these alliances had steadily depreciated. Russia could not
come to the support of Czechoslovakia (except by air) unless she could
secure passage through either Poland or Rumania. Both countries were
bitterly anti-Russian, both had moved out of the French orbit towards
the German, and neither was likely to incur the enmity of Germany hy
allowing the Russians to march through. In any case the Russians were
wary of being drawn into a single-handed conflict \\:lh Germany, and
their alliance only came into operation if the French nio\'ed first to the
Czechs’ support. France, however, was no longer to be relied upon.
Although the French Government had immediately reatlirmed its
obligations to Czechoslavakla after the annexation of Austria, their
retreat for the past three years in face of flitlcr’s demands had under-
mined the system of security they had built up in Central and Eastern
Europe. As Neurath had predicted, the rcoccupation of the Rhineland
and German rearmament had been followed by a marled change of
attitude in the countries to the cast of Germany. No one was going to
risk quarrelling with the new Reich, and there was already a rush to
reinsure in Berlin. In 1938 the Czechs were, therefore, likely to be isolated,
unless the French should at last decide to call a halt to Hitler and
prepare to fight.

Nothing is more striking about Hitler’s handling of foreign policy
than his skill in diagnosing the state of public opinion in hrance, a
country he had nc\er \isited and with whose language and tlioiight he
was totally unacquainted. With his old flair for discovering weaknesses,
Hitler had grasped long before most other people-— even in Germany—
that the France of 1938 was no longer a major factor to be reckoned
with in European politics. While his generals continued to be impressed
by the number of French divisions which could be mobilized, Hitler,
with a shrewder eye for the psychological and social sources of mihiary
strength, was convinced that the French lacked the will to risk war, if
they could possibly avoid it. Although September, 1939, seemed for a
time to prove iiiiii wTong, the French collapse of 1940 was to justify
his view.

The people Hitler never understood, and whose actions continued to
exasperate him to the end of his life, were the British. This is true even of
1938, when Clianaberiam’s policy, whatever its shortcomings, introduced
an element of the incalculable which threw Hitler out of his stride and

403

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

leinporarily thwarted him. After the failure of Ribbcntrop’s mission to
London, Hitler seems to have accepted the cx- Ambassador’s view^ that a
conflict with Britain was almost inevitable m the long ran. But he
evidently hoped to take advantage of Britain’s reluctance to face this
fact, and of Chamberlain’s efforts to leach a settlement, to build up so
strong a position that, by the time the British had woken up to the
situation, he would be so strongly placed that they would be unable to
make any cITectivc challenge. This was a perfectly logical attitude. What
puzzled and irritated Hitler was the illogical behaviour of the British,
who could never be relied upon cither to intervene or not to intervene,
who refused to bind themsehes in such a way as to organize eifective
opposition to Ills plans in Europe, yet continued to fuss and protest
about vyhat happened on the Continent. In the spring of 1938, however,
Hiller believed that, with carelul handling, British intervention could be
avoided as successfully m the case of Czechoslovakia as m that of
Austria. The attitude of London in the first stages of the Czech crisis
suggested that the British were even willing to act on Germany’s behalf
in exerting pressure on the Czechs.

The lever with whicli Hitler planned to undermine the Czech Republic
was the existence inside the Czech fiontiers of a German minority of
some three and a quarter millions, former subjects of the old Hapsburg
Empire. The grievances of these Sudeten Germans and their traditional
hostility towards the Czechs had been a persistent source of trouble in
Czech politics since the foundation of the Republic. The rise of the Nazis
to power across the frontici and the growing strength of Germany had
been followed by sharpened demands from the Sudeten Germans for a
greater measure of autonomy from Prague and by the spread of Nazi
ideas and Nazi organization among the German minority. From 1935
the German Foreign Oflice secretly subsidized the Nazi Sudeten German
Parly iifider the leadership of Konrad Hcnlein at the rate of fifteen
thomand marks a month, and duiing 1938 Hcnlem succeeded in ousting
the rival parties among the Gciman minority from the field.

Aware of the dangers represented by this Trojan Horse within their
walls, the Czech Government made a renewed effort towards the end of
1937 to reach a satisfaciofy settlement with the Sudeten German leaders.
Ostensibly this remained the issue throughout the whole crisis— a square
^ Expressed m liis Memorandum of 2 January 1938, G.D , D.I, No. 93.

404

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 193S-1939

deal for the German minority in Czechoslovakia, not the rcl

between the sovereign states of Germany and CzcchoNlouikiu,
so far as Hitler insisted that satisfaction for the Smieten (iermafis'
demands was indispensable to the iniprovcmcnt of German C/cch
relations. By presenting the isbue in this vuiy Hitler succeeded in con-
fusing public opinion in the rest of the world, and mobilizing sympathy
for the wrongs of an oppressed minority, which would have been denieci
to the aggressive demands of a Great Power on one of its siiialler
neighbours.

After the annexation of Austria, however, the nglih or wrongs of the
German minority ceased to be anything more than Ihe excuse with
which Hitler was pushing his foot into the door. For, on 2S March, 1935%,
Konrad Heiilein, the Sudeten German leader, had a talk of three hours
with Hiller, Ribbcntrop and Hess m Berlin at wiiicli he was loIJ fhat he
must henceforth consider himself as the reprcsenuitive i)f the Fuehrer
and was given instructions to put forward demands which wouU be
unacceptable to the Czech Government. "Hcniein summarized his viewf ’
says the German report, ""as follows. We must alwa>s demand so ninth
that we can never be satisfied. The Fuehrer approved this viewf'^ In this
way Flitler planned to cieate a situation of permanent iinresi in ( Vecfio-
Slovakia which could be progressively intensified until it reached a pitch
where he could plausibly represent himself as forced, once again, to
intervene, in order to pievcnt civil war and the continued oppression of
a minority of the German race.

The events in Austria had already led to big demonstrations in the
Sudetenbnd, much wild talk of ""going Immc to the Reiclf and the
intimidation of Czechs living near the froiuicr. At Saa/, the da> befoie
Heiilein saw Flitler, fifteen thousand Germans marched thruugfi the
streets shouting the slogan* Em Fu/A, Em Rewh^ Em At Lger

the Cfcmoiistrutors numbered tweiUy-iivc thousand, and the church
bells weic pealed in celebration. Rumours were current of troop move-
ments on the Geiinan side of the frontier and an imminent invasion. But
events must nut outstrip Geunany's preparations. Hitler wanted no
repetition of the improvisaUon of March, with German tanks and trucks
stranded by the wayside. So Heniein wus told to keep his supporters in
hand, and wiien Hitler saw Keitel on 21 April he laid it down that the
attack which was to breach the Czech fortifications must be prepared
to the smallest deUiii.

The objective in Hiiler's mind w'as, from the first, the destruction of
the Czech State and the annexation of Bohcniia-Moravui, Tins was only

'O.D., DU, No. 107.

405

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

recognized in the west with the occupation of Prague a year later.
Throughout 1938 the Czech crisis continued to be discussed m terms of
the Sudetenland, of Home Rule for the Sudeten Germans, or at the most
the cession of these frontier districts (in which the Czech fortifications
were situated) to Germany, On 24 April Henlein announced his Eight
Points in a speech at Karlsbad, and these provided a programme with
which to rally the Sudeten Germans, keep the Czech Government in
play and bamboozle public opinion abroad.

Having put this in train, Hitler set out for Rome on 2 May on a State
visit, the invitation for which had been given when Mussolini was in
Germany the autumn before. Every Party boss and Nazi hanger-on tried
to squeeze into the four special trains which were needed to carry the
German delegation and its cumbrous equipment of special uniforms. The
competition to share, at Italian expense, in the endless galas, receptions
and banquets, the expensive presents and imposing decorations, was
intense. Nothing appealed to the gutter-elite of Germany so much as a
free trip south of the Alps.

Hitler was delighted with Italy. No cities in the world, he declared
later, ^ could compare with Florence and Rome, nothing could equal the
beauty of Tuscany and Umbria. The frustrated artist in him warmed to
the incomparable buildings and their setting under a southern sky. He
was less pleased by the fact that protocol required him, as head of the
State, to stay with the King in the Quirinal. The formality of his recep-
tion at the Palace irked him and left him with a permanent dislike of the
Italian Royal House.

Since the two dictators had last met in September the Axis had been
subjected to considerable strain. For the first time they met as neigh-
bours. The Anschluss was not forgotten m Italy, where anxiety about
the South Tyrol had revived, while the Anglo-italian Agreement of April
had been noted without enthusiasm in Berlin. When Ribbentrop pro-
duced a draft German-ftalian treaty of alliance, Mussolini and Ciano
were evasive. After such a display of friendship, Ciano replied, a formal
treaty was superfluous, in the closely packed round of visits, which
included Naples and Florence as well as Rome, there was little time for
political conversations, but at the State banquet in the Palazzo Venezia
on 7 May Hitler underlined the solidarity of the Axis Powers and re-
assured his hosts that he had no intention of reclaiming the South
Tyrol. 'It is my unalterable will and m> bequest to the German people

^ Cf Hitien Tischgesprdeke (21 July, 1941), pages 41 and 409, (4 February, 1942),
pages 415-7.

406

HU)\f \lfNKA TO PR\CO r, 1938-1939

that It skill regard the fumtjer of the Aips^ iaised by naUiic bet\\ecn
both, as for e\cr inviolable/'*

Hitler's referenees to the new Italy were in a generous \cun, and b> the
time he left lie had succeeded in restoring cordiality to the relitions
between the two regimes. It seems probable from laler references that
Hitict informed Mussolini m general terms of his intention to deal next
with the Czechs, but it is veiy unlikely that he told him how far he meaiu
to go. Mussolini, who disliked the Czechs, made no objections, although
by the end of the summer he was to show considerable aiarni at ilie
danger of a genera! war as a result of Hitler’s demands^

Back in Germany, Hitler found his preparatii}ns against C/echo-
siosakia making even better progress than he had hoped. At the end
of April, I93K, the French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister had
conferred with Mr. Cliamberlam and Lord Halifax in l.ondon, hut both
sides had been at pams, separately, to consey reassurances to Hitler,
Indeed, the first fruits of the Anglo french conference w^tc a joint
demarche in Prague, urging the Czechs to make the utmost concessions
possible to the Sudeten Germans. Not content with this, Lord Halifax
then instructed the British Ambassador m Berlin to call on Ribbentrop,
to tc!! him that Britain was pressing the Czechs to reach a settlement with
Hcnlein, and to ask for German cu-operation. Ribbentrup's reply was
that the British and French action was warmly w^elcomed by the Fuehrer,
who must have been delighted at the w^ay in which his two chief oppo-
nents were doing his work for him. A day or two later the FuehreiN
Adjutant, Schmundt, inquired of the General Staff how many Germafi
divisions wcie stationed on the Czech fiontiers ready to march at twehe
hours’ notice, and receised the satisfactory answer: iwehc

At this juncture, howeser, Hitler's plans were thrown into temporary
confusion by an unexpected series of cvenb which transformed his
attitude towards the Czechs,

On 20 May the Czech Government, alarmed by reports of German
troop concentrations near the frontier and by persistent rumours of
preparations for a Gciman attack, ordered a partial mobilization of its
forces. To Hitler's astonishment the Butish and French Go\ernments
piomptly made the stiifest representations, warning Hitler and Ribben-
trop of the grave danger of general war if the Germans made any
aggressive mo\e against the Czechs. At the same time the French,
supported by the Russians, categorically reaffirmed their promise of
immediate aid to Czcchoslosakia. A couned of war hastily sumnioocd to
^ Ba>ncs: voL 11, pages 1,460-3,

407

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

the Beighof on Sunday, 22 May, and attended by Henlem, was faced with
an impiessive display of solidarity on the part of the European Powers
winch, m the unanimous opinion of Hitler’s military advisers, left him
with no option but to call a retreat. Hitler was furious — the more so
because he had not m fact been preparing a move against the Czechs at
so early a date. His preparations were not yet complete, and the rumours
on which the Czech Government had acted w^ere exaggerated and in-
accurate. He had now, however, to calm the storm that had been aroused.

On 23 May the Czech Ambassador in Berlin was assured that
Germany had no aggressive intentions towards his country; Henlein was
packed oflf to Czechoslovakia to resume negotiations with Prague, while
indignant denials were made by the German Foreign Office of the reports
of troop concentrations.

Unfortunately, the effect of the week-end of 21“-22 May was largely
lost upon the Western Powers; it was certainly not lost upon Hitler. The
advocates of appeasement in London and Paris described the May
crisis as a grave blunder and blantcd President Benes for his "‘provoc-
ative” action, while Mr. Chamberlain determined never to run so grave a
risk of war again. Hitler's reaction was different. For a week he remained
at the Berghof in a black rage, which was not softened by the crowing of
the foreign Press at the way in winch he had been forced to climb down.
Then, on 28 May, he suddenly appeared in Berlin and summoned
another conference at the Reich Chancellery. Among those w^ho attended
were Goering, Ribbentrop, Ncurath, Generals Beck, Keitel, Brauchitsch
and the Conimandcr-m-Chicf of the Navy, Racder, Spread out on the
table in the winter garden was a map, and on it Hitler sketched with
angry gestures exactly how he meant to eliminate the State which had
dared to inflict this humiliation on him. The original draft for a new
directive on Operation GicenT presented on 20 May, had begun with
the sentence:

It IS not my mlcoiion to smash C /..xiio^lovakia by milurijv action in the
immediate future Without pi ov ucition, an less an unavoidable development of
political conditions inside C zcchoslovalia the issue, or political

events ill buiopc create d paitiCuhirlv favourable opportunity which may
never recur.-

In the revised draft, signed b\ Hitler on 30 ivlay, this sentente now
became; is my unalterable decision to smash Czechoslovakia by
military aciion in the near future. It is the business of the political

408

^ “Giceii" WuN the code name foi C/cchoslovakia.
-G l>. D H, No. 1/5.

IRCJM VfLNNA 10 iPRAO? K 193h-|il39

leadership to im.-iit or bring about the suitable ni<»mcrJ from a pah!5i.al
and mi illary point c^f

The three neccv.ar} preiequishes wc^e sieiined u\: "W eiiiweniefil
apparenl excu-'C, and, 'vvilh U, adequate political justiiaadaii; ULiaei iiu:
expected b\ the enenn which will timi him in Ihc lca^l stale mI'

readiness,”*

The possibility of a cenciai war cleaif) reckoned with, hut Hitler
hoped by the swifincss of his aviion to forestall effective mteivenlioiL In
an> cic^c, "the whole weight of all forces must he einphned agaiasl
C>.echoslo\ al la ” Accoiding lu Hifler\ later accooiiL he demandei!
the immediate inohili/alion of niiieU-six diMsionc to hegin the oper-
ations.- With the new dlrectne went a covering Icuer fioin (ieiierai
Keitel containing the iiistroction; ”1 (le c\:ciUio!i oftbs Diiatne iiunt
he assured b> ! Oclubei, i9iK, at the latest ” I lulei ne\ei forgave ilie
humiliation of 2! 22 Mas. lie const.uM!> ieK‘Mcd to ii lo his later
Speeches, and from it sprang the veiumioiis fialred with wliidi lie
referred to Picsideni Benc^*. and an inflexible dctennioatioii to obliterate
the \cr} name of CVechoslovaLia.

Vi I

Thf (icrmaii and Bniish dipkunatis dociinienls illustrate clearly enougji
Hiller's tactics for the next three nuioths, June, Jul} and August of 1 9 hi
Ostensibly the dispute was still one between the Sudeten Clennaii P u
and the C/ech Go\ei anient : llie German Govei anient was careful lo
decline any respon^ihib }. But Hiller v^as alread) rsrepanng the ground
for intenentiun. In London and Pars, and through the Ambassadors in
Berlin, eveivthing wus done to iinpuss upon the Brilidi and French
Governments the ohsiiP»‘c\ and unreasonableness uf tlic (Vechs, the
uigency of a situation in wlucli Hulcr might he fuiced to act himself, if
nothiiig wcie done and the folly of a war over the rctttin uftliree million
GciiiUiiis k) their Fatherland, So napies^ed were the Briiisli Govcrnnicnl
With the danger of the situation that m August they wnt Lord Runcimiin
lo Czechoslovakia on a mission o-f investigation and inediatioii. In their
anxiet} to avoid war Loudon and Pans pressed the C/cc!is to make iiioic
and more couces'uoas to the Sudeten Get mans Hitler noted with salis-
faclion the strain to which tlie ( Vechs were being sobiected hv the intcr-
veiilion of the Brili‘4i and the FYench, by the feeling of being pushed and
hurried by their friends, and by their sense of isolation.

^ G.D , D n, No 221 ' Spccvh to the Reichstag, 30 Janiiaiy, 1939;

Ba>nes \ol IL pace DJI, No. 22L

409

CtiwCTiA Oil, 1933-1939

To the east Kitlei pressed tne Rumanians not to make transit facilities
available to the Russians and .vcpt a watcliful eve on Poland. The reports
from Mollke, the German Ambassador in Warsaw, v^eic highly satisfac-
toiy. Polish opinion was inflexible m its opposition to any idea of Soviet
troops marclii ng acro.,s its territoi} to come to the aid of the Czechs. The
Polish GovcrRuienl — especially Colonel Beck — were unfriendly towards
the Czechs, and preoccupied with the possibility of taking advantage of
their difficult position to secure the \aluablc disti ict of Teschen m Czech
Silesia.

The Poles were not the only people vdnose appeiiie for territory might
be eiicouiaged at ihc expense of CzcchosiG\akia. At the end of the war
Hungary had lost tlie wlioie of Slovakia to the new Czechoslovak State.
Budapest's demand for the return at least of the districts inhabited by
Magyars, better still of the whole province, had never wavered. To safe-
guard Slovakia against the cLinns of the Hungarian revisionists, Benes
had concluded the Lhtle Enlenlc with Rumania and Yugoslavia, who
were affected by similar Hungarian claims. The Hungarians were eager
enough to tale advantage of the Czechs’ difficulties, but were worried
lest in doing so they should rro\ ide a casus joecleris for the Little Entente
and commit themselves tcu compleicly to the Gennan side. The tortuous
efforts of the Hungariam^ to find a way out of this dilemma and to sit on
the fence to the last moment met v/ith little appreciation in Berlin. When
the Hungarian Regent, Honhy, accompanied by the Prime Munster and
Foreign Minister, \L>ited Germany towards the cud of August, Ribben-
trop angrily reproached them. Hitler renurkcJ contemptuously that he
had nothing to ask of Hungary, but "that he who wanted to sit at table
must at least help in the kitchen.”^ Tlie Hungarians’ caution was a disap-
pointment to Hiller throughout the cn.hs; it was, none the less, a serious
anxiety to the Czechs.

With Rus.aa Hdicr could do liilie. he confined Limsclf to putting
obstacles m the ’nay of her g'wmg a.d to the Czechs, and played heavily
on British and French dRlike of u wiing Russian co-operation m order
to keep any United Frunt from com ng nlo existence. No attempt seems
to have been made by Lo \xon oi Puns to C'^iablish a common policy
wMi Moscow, despite the Franco -Rusbian and Russo-Czech pacts of
1935. So succe-iful had been Hiller’s anli-Bolshevik propaganda that
these Facts w^ere regarded by the British and French Governments as
iiabilliies rather than as a.'^sels. On the Russian side there was deep— -
and not urjibaifed — dismust cf the Western Fowlers, and a determiiia-

^ Report on the Gciman Hungarian cofxersations at Kiel, 23 August, 1938, G D ,
D Ih No. 383.

410

I POM \n\\\ ir, p:: 1 9' 9

tion not to go one Mep ahaol c T I'kince .r'J Bi r 'n /i o.j- vo!h

Gcrmppy. Hillcr\ remaik to Oi?o Strdsser---‘'‘ro.Me r A'hdaia} in
Europe^'—was still true: li the mafor preni'se o! las iliplonidcy.
Meanwhile HcpIchi and his Proty continued thi ref n:te‘i an- fh:
Czech CjouuTanent In a d: vliov} way, takinycare e , to f nd frcs':i
objections to the su^ce*. i.e C/eth ctiers oi a greater mea >i-c of ;Ion,e
Rule for the Sulcten Distnets. [he Sadenc*' Cienmui Parly made a
particular point ol'capoinrg Lord Rirusinnds sjnipath}. ‘Incir iid cr
task was to keep feehng agjinsi the C'/ecIis in ife froii;icr clisdkts uf
fever-piich: b} the end of due sumner Pne fen ion he;\ue:^ the Sudeten
population and the C/ech nOlrials was rcaJiine snapph-a-pifinL
On the German side of the frontier t! c irnhu r} piep .udions for an
<iftack in the autumn were ■ ys,’‘nartvah> comiraed Hitler, lioauwer,
now began to encounter some resistance lo las ^ Liro m the Aruiv Higii
CiHiimand. Ifis readiness lo i;sL a genera! wm alarmed his slaiF edheers,
and not all were co:ninced by In*, dedanition that n :er.e^‘rtoii by Lrance
and Fiiiunn could be discemUed. I he i pp'^^iljon to Holer was led h}
Gencial Ludwig Beck, ( rief < f St. *f « f the Army, am! the man wli<\
fumi iiow^ until lus suicide after the pint uf y) JuA, 1944, was the iiCiirl
and soul of the German Oppositio.i. Akhougii tie r rounds of IkvL\
opposilion to the Na/i icgune broaJened LUer, at this Cuygc hm objec-
tions were prores>ionai in character, the dangers of a var with the
Western Powers osc?* CAecl^o^1^wakn^ and (kTmai>>\ inadccfoide prep-
arations for ^udi a conflict in 193H. TIknc \iewM Beck in a

series of meim^randa with winch he tried lo persuade Ihc rVaiKamdct-
m-Chief of the Array, fseneial \o’: Dra ichiisch, to mile a stand
against Ihllcrd In his dmi} for 30 ?vlc> S;ereuJ Jrdl v.iote:

The whole conlia**! htc aacs t>ace moie ac ile f'i Usecii Ifie FuchrerA
intiiit'on tfial we mm! do it ifii"* >cva, and the epimon of the Army that we
cannot do it >cl, as most ceriard^ the Western Puweis wdl uiteifcic, and we
aic not as ug ccua! tc? tliemo

Brauchiisdy altlioiigli he agreed wah IkalFs m^'imicnt, temporized
and tried lo a\oid taking actiim. In the In a week of kugu a, howexer, at
BeckA insistence, a mcsrtinc ui' the leading csTamarilciN x\as held in
Berlin under the chdirmupLliip cu' Bruuchit^cli. Tlieie was almost uni-
versal support for Bcclds views, only tw’o genenis expressing dissent.
This time Brau^’hiisch wein so far as to siibnut Beck\ nicmorandiiiii
to Hiticrt

^ 'Ihc memoranda aie pirnt d m \Vulfxuii» Focr : F m Uvn 'A/u mji! ^’e^intikn
Kitct^ Am mu h h Fupa ten e'es GetKialstaJ^^ Ag* L ihk c; net L i Miinicli, I949 l

2 A. a !7,*U-pa.

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

News of the generals’ conference and of Beck’s memorandum had
already reached Hitler. After a stormy argument with Brauchitsch, on 10
August Hitler summoned another conference, this time to the Bergliof.
The senior generals were excluded; Hitler appealed to the younger gener-
ation of the Army leaders, and for three hours he used all his skill to set
before them the political and military assumptions on which his plans
were based. Then, for the first — and last — time at a meeting of this sort,
he invited discussion. The result was disconcerting. General von Wieter-
sheim, Chief of Staff to the Army Group Commander at Wiesbaden,
General Adam, got up and said bluntly that it was his own, and General
Adam’s, view that the western fortifications against France could be
held for only three weeks. A furious scene followed, Hitler cursing the
Army as good-for-nothing and shouting: 'T assure you, General, the
position will not only be held for three weeks, but for three years.”^
Jodi added the comment: "The vigour of the soul is lacking, because in
the end they (the Staff Officers) do not believe in the genius of the
Fuehrer. And one does perhaps compare him with Charles XH of
Sweden.”

The result of this clash was inconclusive. Brauchitsch declined to go
further. When Beck thereupon resigned, and demanded that the Com-
mander-in-Chief resign with him, Brauchitsch refused Beck’s resig-
nation was kept secret until 31 October, after Munich. In the meantime
General Haider took over his duties as Chief of Staff from 1 September.
Hitler rejected any alteration in his polic}', yet he was conscious of the
fact that the opposition, if it had been silenced, had not been convinced

On 3 September, Hitler summoned Keitel, Chief of the O K.W., and
Brauchitsch, the Cummander-m-Chief of the Army, to the Berghof to go
over the final arrangements. Field units w^ere to be moved up on 28
September and X-day fixed b> noon on 27 September.-' The next day
President Benes put an end to tlie Sudeten leaders’ game by asking them
to visit him in the Hradsvhin Palace and in\iting them to set down on
paper their full deniand>, with the |ia)niire lo grant them immediately
whatever they might be. Caught off' then guaid, the Sudeten Party found
to their horror that the Czechs' fourth offer, \iitualiy dictated by them-
selves, fiiifiiled the Eight Points demanded in Henlein’s ivarlsbad speech.
In their embarrassment t!ie Sudeten leaders used the pictext of incidents
at Moravska-Ostrasa lo break off the negotiations with Prague and send
an ultimatum demanding the punishment of those responsible before

^ Jodi's diar> foi 10 August Cf also the accounts of rieid-Maislial von Brau-
chitsch and Field-Mai'shal von Manstcin; N P , part XXI, pages 24 and 48

^ Notes of the Conference b> Hitler’s Adjutant, Sihmundt, G.D., D.ll, No. 424

412

IKUM \ifNN\ ro PKACi! L,

the} could be resumed, fninicdiaiely aftciuuid^, llcrilcui ieil fur
Germany.

hor some nnic pd%f the foreign embassies in Berlin had beeii repenting
that the opcnmgof the linai stage of flie C/edi cri'^ts ^ouki vuincide \utii
the Nuremberg Party Rah}, due to begin on 6 Sepieraber. Ilnier
m Berlin \cr> iittle duung the summer, and had made practicaii} nu
speeches saw ihc electa)!! campaign of Apnl and ihc viot to ltal> in
May, His dosmg speech a! Nuremberg o:i 12 September, it \\as saak
would shi^w winch wa> the wind was hlowmg and perliap^ decide Ihe
issue of peace cm* war.

Meanwhile a ^mall group of cunsfaiatorw w Inch mefyded Dr. SJiacht,
Generals Wii/lchen iConir.uindmg Oibcei of Jlie thud MNasr;* Districe
in BerlinK CKter the Aimy ( ounier-lmclhgencc). fk\k, and
Hoeppner fcoiiimandingan armed dnisicm in Thiinngiah was dasciKsmg
the ps)ssibilil\ of seizing lliflcr by force as he gave ihc uider lu

allack the C/eths, and putting him on tnal before die PeopleN Cuuri.
Much depended upon tlien* abshiv to pci-^uade BmiKhitsclu the Aroiv
Comiiiandef-m-ChieC and Hakler, his new (Inef of Slaif, that a gcneiaf
war was incvUdble. and various soundings were made in Limdmi in the
hope of securing incontesiahle piuef llial Bnuiin and I raikc would
support the Czechs in the event o/fa Gcimao attack, ouch evidence as
they Were able to gel, however “iiielLding a lelter iium Mr. i hurchi!!-
failed to convince Braiichilsch m Haider, and die conspirac} hung filed
On 9 September Hiller held ar»oiher uuliijr} tonferente in Nuremberg
winch went on unUl half past three in the mumisig and was aueiHied by
Haider, as well as Brauclntscfi and Keiieh Hiller cntici/ed iIk* AiimN
plans as too cannon^, in failing io provide that concentriilioii offoices
which alone would achieve a bie.'L-lhiougli and secuic llie quick,
decL>ivc success he needed. His aim wa^ to diivc at once right uilo (lie
heart of C/echoslovaku and leave the CVech \!:m ui the rear/ X^da)
was now fi\ed fi>r 3d Septemhci, and was to be preceded b} a rising in
Sudetenland.

Appeals and warnings from I endon and Pans had no clfect on I filler;
they did lUH erase the indelible impression which the evidence of the
British and iTcach desire to avoid war had left on his mind. As if to
confiriH liH view, Ihe limes, on 7 Septcmbci, publisficd lis famous
leader suggesting the possihilit} of Czechoslovakia ceding the Sudden-
land to Gcimany. When Hitler stood in the spotlight^* at the huge

* See the lull ikcuitiU m J, W Wdieeki -Bennett, llw Semesis of- /Vnur,

Notes b> Sthnamdi of the Confcienec; G U , D.lh No, 44S

413

ciiAxrf llur, 1933-1939

stadium on the final night of the Rally, ail the world was waiting to hear
what he would say — and lhe> were not disappointed. Ills speech was
remarkable for a brutal attack on another State and its President such
as had raiely, if e\cr, been heard in peacetime before.

Phtlcr made no attempt lodhgui^e hi-, angei at the humiliation of 21-
22 May, which, he declared, had been deliberately planned by Bene^,
who spread the lie that Germany had mobilized.

You w**i understand, m> comrades, llkii a Gicat Power cannot tor a second
time Slitter such an infainuus encioachnwnt upon its rights. . , , I am a
National Socialist, and as such I am accuslomed on eveiy attack to hit back
immediately. I know, too, quite well that thicugh foibearance one will
never rcconcde so incconcilabie an cnv-iny as are the C/wchs; they will
only be provoked tu inrthei presumption . . .

Herr Benes plc)s his tactical game: lie makes spe^^ches, he wishes to
negotiate, after tiic manner i?f Geneva he uishes to cleui up the question of
procedure and to riakc iittlc appcaocment presents. But m ihe long ran that
IS not good cnoLigli^ . . .

1 am in no way wilhisg that here in tiie heait of Geniuny a second
Palestine should be pci mined to The poor Arabs aic defenceless and
dcseited. The Gcim'ms m Occhoskwakia aie neither defcilcele^s nor are
they deseited, and people should take not'cc of that fact.-^

At every pause tlic deep baying of the huge crowd gathered under the
stars, and the roar of "hh/cC Heil! Siefi lleiU Sie*^ supplied a

sinister background. At lust the one-time agitator of the IVfuiiich beer-
Iialls had the world for audsence. Yet, for ail his tone of menace Hitler
was carel'iii not to pm hiniseif down; he demanded only justice for the
Sudeten Germans, and left in his own Lands the decision as to what
constituted justice.

The speech was the Signal fur a rising m the Sudetenland, and theie
were ugly scenes in Eger and Kadsbad, where several people were shot.
The Czechs proclaimed martial law, and by the 15ih had the situation in
hand. But the Sudeten leaders had u.-^ed the proclamation of martial law
as an excuse to de!i\er an ultimatum demaading its inimediate repeal and
the willidrawal of the State police. When no reply was received within the
time-limit, Henlein disbanded the Sudeten negotiating comiiiittee, bioke
off all contact v/itli Prague, and issued a proclamation ending with the
words * ' AVe wish to Iiv e as free Germans. We want peace and work again
ill our homeland. We want to return to the RciCh.’'- Thereupon, followed
by several thousand of followers, Henlein moved to Bavaria and

^ Speech of 12 Septembei at \ercmbeig, Baines: \oL II, pages 1,487-99.

^ Proclamalioii issued b\ the Geiman Agency (D N.B ) m Berlin on 15

September, G D., D II, No. 490.

414

f ROM \ P \ in PI' w,! j ^ I i f

crgdir-/cil a Sitili;lcri I rciLoip^ loi udds atru . d iViJ.iMr. v,!:!"*-

drawal of if *a!cio in Uwi led lo a p.^JficatH'n nt iPc Sitj ba!

this did nni Mnp the Gennan JVi^^ pnnaiig ^va» i'-'M of i /aca
'Yeign of [errob’ ynder banner headline All prclence fh.,'l it luo pm A}
a IB If ter io sea Lai belueen Prague a iJ bse Snde*en Gen nj. Lob re ib
been dinpped: HenLnn's Pruc! ^•*r'atit>n and fltpio brought C s.b: len} irt «
the centre of the pictf^re.

Vfff

So far c\enS hrd fo!!\n^ed the enur ihiler had bnc'cn;. Tic unev
pecled deiBcnt that now appeared, foieira linn crcnti e!o lo modhy his
plans and pcotpone his tnuniph, was the iniliaMse c'l li.e ‘hhi !i Piiioe
Minister in (offering to 11s to Gerneiny fora pere ? ml sh iCiP'-oinL Twentv
four hours after HillerL speech at Nuiendvij the ! icriih (juscrnmenl
reached a ptant Vvherc if was so chsiced on flic t|ucstion i)f Us 4 )bbw!tions
to C/cihosiovakia that tbel rcD.Ii Ih nnc Miniaer. M. DaledicB appealed
to Mr. Chambcrlaiti to uuike the host barsan he couki with I filler. Mr.
ChaTiiberlaiiB who had for some time been C(«nM‘deriro! the adsantages
of an iiitc3\:cu with Hiller, at once sent Gfat de^ en o\lojk t>ii the same
mening (the 13ih) a niessapw propo.^ing that he sluiyld f1> to Germany (if
possible the iie\t dev), and try to find a basis for a peacefLi! solution.

Hitler was tel cn by surprise, but dehp^ted. '"Ivh tiP umi Hnmuii
ficfalkir Pi fell f**om Hcavcii'b was his own 1 Bit \eoioi: of his
feeliULS ^ His vamly was gratified bv the puwpejt ih’the Prune Minister
of Great BriUiin, u nrm twenty years ohicr i!*afi hmi-elf. m4:ing his
first flight at the age of sixly-iune in ouIct to come and plead with him.
Hitier did not even oiler to meet him fialhvay, but awaited him at the
Berghof, in the extreme south-east cornci of Genikuiy, a journey of
seven hours even by plane.

There, at four o'clock on 15 SeptembcB Chamberlain was greeted by
i Iillcr at the top ofibc steps and, after a brief interval for tea, went with
him lo the study on the first Hoor where Schuschnigg had been icceived
seven months hefo: \ Tlicv were asctnnpanied only by Paul Schmidt, the
interprcLT, SirNcvile Henderson had taken special pains to exclude llic
touchy and maligiiaot Riblentrop with his particiiLir rescntnienl
against the Biitish. Ribbentrop retorted by lefusiiig to make SchmidtX
record of the conference available to Cliamh, rlam afterwards.

Hitler began by a hmp, nnblov^ account of all that he had done for
^ L. B N.iiraci, n:ciic Pa iu^k‘ {luiidon, iV4S|, page 15.

415

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Germany in foreign policy, bow he had ieh,torcd Ihc eqiiaiily of rights
denied by Versailles, yet at the same time had signed the Pact with
Poland, followed by the Nasal Treaty with Britain, and had renounced
Alsace-Lorraine. The question of the leturn of the Sudeten Germans,
however, was different, he declared, since this affected race, which was
the basis of his ideas. These Germans must come into the German Reich.
“He would Hice any war, c\cn the iisk of a world war, for this. Here the
limit had been reached where the rest of the world might do what it hked,
he would not yield one single step “

Chambeilain, who had spent most of the interview so far Iisleiiingaiid
watching Hitler, inicrnipted to ask if this was all he wanted, or whether
he was aiming at the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Pliticr replied
that there W’ere Polish and Hungarian demands to be met as well —
what was left would not interest him. The Sudetenlaiid was the one
remaining problem, but, he iiiMsted again, he was determined to sol\e it
by one means or another.

He d.d not wish that an> doubts should ai isc as to his absolute determination
not to tolerate any longer that a miall, second-iale country should tieat
the mighty thousaiid-ycar-oJd Geiman Reich as something infcnoi.

Chamberlain attemplcd to narrow the problem do\^n to practical
considerations: if the Sudctcnlund was to be ceded to Germany, how
was this to be done, what about the areas of mixed nationality, was there
to be a transfer of populations as wu'il as a change of frontieis? Hitler
could never submit to such questioning. He became excited.

All this seems to be acaacmic; ! want to get down to realities. Three
hundred Sudetens have been killed, and things of thin kind cannot go on ; the
thing has got to be settled at once. 1 am actermoied to settle it, 1 do not care
W'hethcr ilieie is a world war or not. I am determined to settle it and to settle
It soon; 1 am picpaied to ri*k a worid war lather than allow this to diag
on.

Out.sidc the autumn day was d>mg, the wind Iiowled and the ram ran
down the window-panes. I 'p in this boLi\e among the mountains two
men were discussing the issue oi' war or peace, an issue that must affect
millions of people they had ne\ei seen C‘r heard t>f It was this thought
which preoccupied ChamberiaiiL iiiid now he too began to grow angry.

'if the Fuehrer is detenmned to settle ^h’smatter by force," he retorted,
“without waiting even for a di'-cussion beuveen ourselves to take place,
what did he let me come here foi? I ha\e w'asted my time "

ChamberlainN protest had its dlect. Hitler hesitated, and his mood
changed. “Welt, if the British Government wcic prepared to accept the
416

I’RfiM viiNNA 10 PRAGirr, 193^-1939

idea of secession in principle, and to say so, there npglit be a chance then
to have a talk/' Here, Chamberlain fclt^ was something i(? bite ai last
He declined to commit himself until he had consulted ho C ahinet, but if
Hitler was prepared to consider a peaceful separation of die Sudeten
Germans from (Vcchosknakia, then he believed there was a way out, and
would return for a second meeting. Meanwhile he a'^ked Hiller for an
assurance that he w'ould not take precipitate action until he had recened
an answer. With all the appeaiance of making a great concession. Hitler
agreed, knowing perfectly well that X-day was m any case still a fortnight
aw’ay.

Here the diwussion ended lor the time being, and Chaniberiain next
day flew back to London wUhoul seeme Hitler a second timed

Hiller, as he later admitted to Cliamhcrkuo, ncser supposed that the
British Prime Minister would he able to secure the Czechs' agreement to
a voluntary surrender of the Sudetenland to Germany, He saw the ioter-
\iewat Beiclitesgaden, not as an ahernative to his infennon ia\icstroying
Czechoslovakia by force, hut as a further mean> i 4* ensuring that Britain
and France would ntit intervene. He had diawn the British Prime
Minister into advocating the cession of the Sudetenland on the grounds
of sclf-deicrminadon; if, as he anticipated, this was reiected by Prague,
m Chambcrlainks eyes the responsibility of war would icst on the un-
reasonable Czechs, and Britain would be less likely than ever to go to
Czechoslovakia's aid, or to encourage the French to do so.

During the w^^ek that followed, therefore. Hitler coetiiiucd his prep-
arations to attack Czechoslovakia. On the I7tli he aotlioiised the
establishment of the Sudeten German FYcikoipN and mslrucicd the
Army High Command to loi»k after then needs. On the Ikth the Army
reported its plans for the deployment of live armies against the Czechs,
a total of thiity-six divisions, including three aimoiircd divisions.^

Political preparations matched the military. On 20 September the
Slovak Pciiple's Party, at Hcnlein's prompting, put fonvard a claim to
aiiiononiy for the Slovaks. On the same day Hitler saw' the Hungarian
Prime Minister and Foreign Minister in Berlin and sharply urged lliem
to present their demands to Czechoslovakia for the return of the
districts claimed by Hungary, 'in his opinion,'’ he added, ‘hictlori by the
Army would provide the only satisfactory solution. There was, however,

* This uri fVm! Sihaiidfs official report ni (i D„ DJI, No 487;

Sclioiidfs account m fas hook, Suitst auf diplomatist In r Biihm% pa.CAW 3‘i4"V;
ChaiiibcrlaiiiN notes, Bm. Doe , kd series, sol U, No S95, 1'hainhcflaioX letter to
his sister, IV Septemher, in Keith Peihng Ijfe of Vcu//c Chamberiam t London,
1946|, pages 3hh-8: Sir Nevile Ucitdcrsoo, pages 149-50.

2 N.D. 388-PS, Item 26,

L.H.— O

417

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

a danger of the Czechs submitting to every demand.”^ On the 2ist
the Foies delivered a Note in Prague, asking for a plebiscite m the Tes-
chen district, a step followed by the Hungarian Govermnent the next
day. By the 22nd the Sudeten Freikorps, armed and equipped in
Germany, had seized control of the Czech towns of Eger and Asch.

This same day (22 September) Mr. Chamberlain again flew to
Germany, and was received by Hitler at Godesberg, on the Rhine. The
British delegation were accommodated at the Hotel Petersberg, on one
side of the river; Hitler stayed on the other, at the Hotel Dreesen, where
he had decided m June, 1934, to Oy to Munich and begin the Roehm
Purge.

The first meeting \sas held m the conference room of Hitler’s hotel in
the late afternoon. Mr Cliambcrlaiii was in an excellent temper. As a
result of extreme pressure on the Czech Government he had returned to
Germany with the agreement of the British, French and Czech Govern-
ments to the proposal he had discussed with Hitler at Berchtesgaden.
He was prepared to present a plan for the transfer of the Sudeten districts
of Czechoslovakia to Germanv, with a commission to settle the details,
and the transfer of populations where no satisfactory line could be
drawn. In addition, to remove German fears of Czechoslovakia being
used as a base from which to attack Germany, the existing alliances
which the Czechs had with Russia and France were to be dissolved, while
Britain would join in an international guarantee of Czechoslovakia’s
independence and neutrality.

When Chamberlain had finished speaking, Hitler inquired wJiether
his proposals had been submitted to the Czech Government, and
accepted by them. The Prime Mmisier replied: “‘Yes.” There was a brief
pause. Then Hitler said, quite quietly: “'I’m exceedingly sorry, but after
the events of the litA few days this solution is no longer any use.”

A long and acrimonious debate followed. Chamberlain was both
angiy and puzzled, he had, he declared, taken his political life in Ms
hands to secure agreement to Hitler's demands — only for Hitler to turn
them down. He could see no reason at all wh> Hitler should regard the
situation as so changed in the past week that the solution discussed at
Berchtesgaden was no longer applicable. Nor did Hitler give any clear
indication of the reasons why he had changed his mind. He talked of
the demands of the Poles and Hungarians, the unreliability and treachery
of the Czechs; he argued himself into a fury over the wiongs and

^ Report on the meeting of Hitler with Imredy and Kan>a on 20 September;
G.D , DJJ, No. 554.

418

IROM Ml\\\ 1C) RRACstI, 193S-ly39

sufferings of the Sudeten GenmoN: above all. Ire in .n.icd on the urgency
of the situation and the need fi)r speed. The whole piobkmi, he shouted^
must be settled by I Oclobcr. If war was to be avoided, ihe CVecLs must
at once withdraw from the main areas to be ceded these were iiiarkcd
by the Germans on a map— and allow them io be Oi.ciipicd bv ( icriiun
forces. Afterwards a plebiscite could be held to settle the detailed hne of
the frontier, but the essential camduion was a Gcmiaii occupaiioo of the
Sudetenland, at onced

Messages brought into the conference room reporting the death of
more Sudetens that da} enabled Hiller to work up his indignation to a
new pitch. Yet, as the> walked on tlie terrace at the coiicIusH)!! of the
three hours' discussitm, he said to Mr. Chaniherlani wilh a complete
change of manner: ''Oh, Mr, Prime Miuistcr, I am so ^nrl v : I had looked
forward to showing \ou this beautiful view oi the Rhine . . . hut now
It is iiiddcii by the mist.”-

A deadlock in the negotiations had now been reached. Chamberlain
took note of HillerY new demands, but he refused to comiint Iiim»elfand
withdrew to his hotel across the nver.

The question which puz/lcd the Prime Minister, and which the
historian must attempt tu answer, was why Hiller had acted in this
unexpected way. Hitler, it scorns clear, had never taken seriously
the possibility that Chamberlain could obtain Czech agreement to the
demand for the cession of the Sudetenland which he had advanced in
the Berchtesgaden talk. The news, which he rcceivai the day before the
Godesberg meeting, that the Czechs had been persuaded to accept, faced
him wath a new and awkward situation, Hiticr's intention, as expressed
in the military directives of the summer, was to destri>y C/cchoslovakia,
and the Sudeten demands were iinl} a means to this end. Now he was
offered the cession of the Sudeicnland as a substitute for the overrunning
of the whole of C/echosiovakia,

There were arguments in faviiur 4)f accepting Chaniberkuifs offer, as
Hitler saw' perfectly well: the risk of a genera! war, if he persisted; the
w^arnings of the General Stall* that Germany was not yet prepared for
such a conflict, a solid gam at no expense. But this w'as iiul enough lo
satisfy him. Since May he iiad been consumed with a lust foi revenge on
Benes, and with the desire to smash Czechoslovakia by force. The use of

^ SchmidOs account in Cr D , D H, No 56?, and hiN book, page 401 ; KirkpatrickY
Minute in Bm Poc , 3rd Senes, \ol il. No. 1,033, Ilendeison. paiies 154-5.

® Andre Maiirois, Ttavedv in Frame iiondon, 194(0, pages 12-13: Chamberlain
himself recounted the incident on his visit lo Pans in November, 1938.

419

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

force had a natural attraction for him; he itched to spit in the face of the
respectable, bourgeois world with its talk of respect for law, the rights
of small nations and ail the other League of Nations catchwords. The
cession of the Sudetenland would give him a good part of what he
wanted, since it would mean the loss of the Czech frontier fortifications
and would effectively cripple the Czechs’ capacity to defend themselves.
But it would rob him of the satisfaction of revenging himself by force
on the insolent nation which had humiliated him m May, and would
oblige him to proceed in two stages to the elimination of Czechoslovakia,
which remained his ultimate objective.

Hitler’s new proposals at Godesberg were a compromise. He now
added to his original claim to the Sudetenland the demand for its
immediate occupation by the German Army before any plebiscite was
held. If the Czechs agreed to this it would provide so striking a demon-
stration of his power, so severe a humiliation for the Czechs and for the
prestige of the Western Powers, as to offer at least a temporary satis-
faction to his resentment and ambition. If, on the other hand, the Czechs
refused, then the way was still open to carry through his original pro-
gramme, and preparations to this end were to go forward. These
preparations would not, in any case, be complete before 30 September-
i October, and Hitler was prepared — this was the limit of his concessions
— to let the British and French try to secure Czech agreement to his
minimum demands in the meantime. But on two points he was adamant:
the time-limit must be adhered to, and the Czechs must accept an imme-
diate military occupation.

From this programme Hitler did not diverge, and the final agreement
at Munich gave him substantially what he asked for at Godesberg,
But there remained in his mind a feeling of irritation at having conceded
even so much, and a continued conflict between the desire for a triumph
on the cheap without n^ks, and the hope that the negotiations would
stiii fail and he would be free to follow his original inclination and launch
his armies over the frontier, it was a conflict between temperament and
calculation, m which he inclined now to one side, now to the other, as his
mood and the new^s altered : it was not resoUed even by the Munichsettle-
meiit, not indeed until sl\ months later he sat m the Hradschm Palace
in Prague and wrote the w'ords: “’Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist.”

Meanwhile, at Godesberg, an exchange of letters across the river
failed to persuade Hitler to give way, and Chamberlain confined him-
self to asking for a memorandum and maps of the German proposals,
announcing his intention of returning to England.

420

TRdM VIENNA TO PRAGIE, 193S-I9.V)

While the memorandum was being prepared, Hiiier in\ifed ('harnher
lain to a further discmssion at half past ten on the evening vf flic 23 r<l.
By the time Chamberlain crossed the Rhine Haler hia! recir.eicd his
temper, thanked the Prime Minister for all lie laid done and expressed
the hope fhat a peaceful solution was still posuhle. But there was m>
modification of Ins demands; instead a new time liniii had iitrA been
added, requiring the Czechs to heem evacuation of the territory to be
ceded by 26 Septemher, and U) complete it by 2H September, in four day.'f
time. The excliances between the two men had already become tan
when Ribbentrop brought the news that the C Vechs had uidered mohib
ization. That, Hitler declared, settled mauers. But Chainberkiin refused
to give up. The argument went to am! fro, lluler cvcitrdly denouncing
the Czechs, C“hamberlain not concealing his mdtgiiation at Hitler’s
impatience and his anger at the way he had been treated. ¥^hen
Chamberlain desenhed the dcK-iiment he had been gfven as an uiit-
malum, Hitler ptfmtcd to the fact that if boie the word Memorandum’’
at the top. This was too much for the Prime MiiuHcr, who retorted that
he was more impressed hy tlie content than bytliefillc. Hitler, people
would say, was already behaving like a conqueror: no, intcrjccfcd Hitler,
“like an owmer with his property.”^

Yet, once again. Hitler seems to have been mipicsscd by the way in
which the Prime Minister stood up to him. He calmed down siiflicicntly
to agree to certain changes of detail, and m the end to the substitutKUi
of I October for the two other dates. Mr. Chamberlain, lumever, did
not pledge litrasclf to do more than submit the Godesberg Memiirandum
to the British and Czech Governments, and with tliis he retiirneii to
London.

Whatever Chamberlain’s personal inclinations nia\ have been, on
Sunday, 25 September, the British Cabinet decided Ihui il could not
accept the terms Hitler had offered or urge them iin the Czechs. On the
26th Mr. diamherlain at last gave assurances of British support to
France if she became involved ;n w'ar with Germany as a result of
fulfilling her treaty obligations, and preparations for war w’ere expedited
in both Britain and France.

The British Prime Minister, however, still refused to give up hope and
resolved to make one last appeal to Hitler, in the hope of persuading
him to moderate the lone of the speech he wus due to make in the Berlin
Sportpaimi on the evening of the 26lh. Sir Horace U'ilson was at once

^Kirkpatrick's notes, B//7. Senes III, vol II, No. 1,033 and 1,073; Gi).
Dil, No 562, Sthnudt, pages 3W-407; Henderson pages 152-7,

421

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

sent off by plane with a personal letter to the Fuehrer. In this Mr.
Chamberlain reported the rejection by the Czech Government of the
Godesberg Proposals. But, he added, the issue could still be settled by
peaceful means if Hitler would agree to direct negotiations between the
German and Czech Governments, with the British present as a third
party.

In the interval Hitler had swung back into his most intransigent mood,
working his resentment, hatred and impatience of opposition up to the
pitch where they would provide him with the necessary stimulus for his
speech. This was the mood m which Sir Horace Wilson and the British
Ambassador found him when they arrived to present the British Prime
Minister’s letter at five o’clock on the 26th, three hours before the
meeting m the Sportpalast was due to begin. Hitler was so keyed up that
he could scarcely bear to remain seated. When Schmidt, the interpreter,
who was reading out a translation of the letter, came to the words:
“The Czech Government regard the proposal as wholly unacceptable,”
Hitler leapt up, and shouting: “There’s no point at all m going on with
negotiations,” made for the door. Only with difficulty could Wilson
persuade him to hear them out, and he continued to bark out interrup-
tions. “The Germans were being treated like niggers; one w'ould not
dare treat even the Turks like that. ‘On the 1st of October I shall have
Czechoslovakia wheie I want her.’ If France and England decided to
strike, let them. He did not care a farthing.” The utmost the British
representatives were able to get out of him was agreement to conduct
negotiations with the Czechs, on the basis of their acceptance of the
Godesberg Memorandum and a German occupation of the Sudetenland
by 1 October. If he was to hold back his troops, Hitler demanded an
affirmalue reply within less than forty-eight hours, by 2 p.m. on Wed-
nesday, 28 September, Time and date, it is clear from the records, w^ere
fixed on the spur of the moment. As Sir Horace Wilson left, Hitler urged
him to come to the Sportpalast ihat e\cning, in oider to get an idea of
what feeling in Germany \sas

Hitler’s speech at the Sportpalast was a masterpiece of invective
which even he ne\cr surpassed. He began, as his custom was, with a
survey of his own efforts to arri\e at a settlement with the other Powers
m the past five years. He instanced the problems that had already been
solved—the familiar catalogue of the Pact with Poland, the Anglo-
German Naval Treaty, the renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine, friendship

^Kirkpatrick’s notes of the interview, Bnt, Doc, Senes IH, vol II, No. 1,118;
Schmidt: pages 407-8; Henderson, page 159.

422

MlWk TO PRAfiM. IV3'''-i939

witli Italy, the peaceful incur poralicni uf Aum:u 'ArC hu'a U\

stands the last pruWem that must be Si)!vedufHl vsill he su]\ed, li is the
last territorial claiiii v^hich I ha\e to make in hiirupe, bill it llic cLini
from which I vvill not recede and v'vhicli, (iud \uihnin 1 \ull make iuutL“
The origin of the C/ech probfein, he declared, was the relU',al of the
Peacemakers to apph their own principle ofscIf-deteriiiaMttum.

This Czech State began with a single lie, and the fai fiei of tins he was
named Benes. . . . Theie i * no such thing as u C/cdio dovak natK)n, but oiii>
Czechs and Slosaks, ami the SL waks do not w oh to have anything do with
the Czechs.

From tins point HitlerA acciiuni hcvaioc inoic and mure grolcSi|iie
in its inaccuiMcy. flasina enahlshed a uile of terrier o\cr the suhjecl
peoples, the Sloiaks, Ciermuiis, Magyars aiid Poles, Bcoes had set
out s}stemat!ca!Iv to destroy the Cjerman minorn\; llic} weic to be
shot as tiaitors if they lefused to tiic on their fellow (iernians. The
Germans were so persecuted that hundreds of thousand’^ fled into exile;
thousands more were hiUcheied bv the Czechs. Meanwhile fkiies pul
his country at the scr\ice of the Bolshesiks ai an ad\aneed air base
which to bomb German).

When, Hitler continued, he had insisted that there must be a change,
Benes started a still more luthless persccuthm cTthe budtien Germans,
and brought off the cle\ef‘ trick of 21 May. Protected hv Bniairi, I raiicc
and Russia, he bclicsed he could do what he liked. Hitler liieii ga\e a
wildly exaggerated picture of cimditions in the SikielcnUnd. I he daily
number of refugees, he claimed, had risen from HHMH) to 90,WK) and
137,000, "and today 2i4,CK)0. Wiiole stretdRs of ct*unlry arc depupa*
fated, villages burned down, attempts made to sriiuke out the Germans
with hand grenades and gas. Herr Benes, however, sits in Prague
and is convinced: 'Ncithing can happen to me: in the end Fngland and
France stand behind med And now, my fellow' cuumry men, I believe that
the time has come when one must mince matteis no longer. . . . For in
the last resort Herr Benes lus wven million Czechs, but here there stands
a people of over sevcnty-lue niillionsd'

Hitler briefly explained the Gode >herg proposals, hrusluiig aside the
Czech objection that these constiiuted a new situation. The Czechs had
already agreed to the transfer of the districts demanded; the only differ-
ence was the German occupation. In other words: "Herr BeiicsA promise
must be kept. That is the 'new situatioiF n)r Herr Benes.*”

The Czechs, Hitler declared in his peroration, were working to over-
throw the Chamberlain Government in Britain and Daladier in France;

423

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

they placed tlieir hopes on Soviet Russia. In this way they still thought to
evade fulfilling their promises.

And then I can only say one thing. Now two men stand arrayed one against
the other : there is Herr Benes, and here am I. We are two men of a different
make-up. In the great struggle of the peoples, while Herr Benes was sneaking
about through the world, I as a decent German soldier did my duty. And
now today I stand over against this man as a soldier of my people. , . . With
regard to the problem of the Sudeten Germans, my patience is now at an
end. I have made Hen Benes an offer which is nothing but the execution
of what he himself has promised. The decision now lies in his hands: Peace
or War. He will either accept this offer and now at last give the Germans
their freedom, or we will go and fetch this freedom for ourselves. The world
must take note that in four and a half years of war, and through the long
years of my political life, there is one thing which no one could ever cast
in my teeth. I have never been a coward. Now I go before my people as its
first soldier, and behind me — this the world should know — there marches
a different people from that of 1918.

We are determined !

Now let Herr Benes make his choice.^

Rarely has the issue of war or peace been so nakedly reduced to the
personal resentment and vam tv of one man.

In the balcony just above Hitler, Bill Shirer, the American broad-
caster, was sitting watching. In his diary he wrote:

For the first time in all the years I’ve observed him, he seemed tonight to
have completely lost control of himself. When he sat down, Goebbels sprang
up and shouted: ‘'One thing is sure: 1918 will never be repeated!” Hitler
looked up at him, as if those were the words which he had been searching
for all the evening. He leapt to his feet and, with a fanatical fire in his eyes
that I shall never forget, brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pound-
ing down on the table, and yelled with all the power in his lungs: ”Ja!”
Then he slumped mlo his chair exhausted.-

The next morning Hitler was still in the same exalted mood; the
process of seif-mtoxication with his own woids was still at work. Sir
Horace Wilson, calling for a second time just after noon, could do
nothing with him. When he asked where the conflict would end, if the
Czechs rejected the German demands. Hitler retorted that the first end
would be the total destruction of Czechoslovakia. When Wilson then
added that the war could scarcely be confined to Czechoslovakia, and
that Britain would feel obliged to support France if she went to the aid
of the Czechs, Hitler twisted his words round:

^ Baynes \oi. IT, pages 1,508-27.

“ William L. Shirer. Berlin Diary (London, 1941), pages 118-9.

424

FRciM \irNN\ TO pR\f,ir, 193^-193^)

That means that if I lance cIkhiscs io atta^^k < armam', f njland fecis n jie»*
duty to attack Gciman> al«o. f can onf\ take note uf umnuin^eiitiop.

« * , If France and Lngland strike, let Ihcm ilu If ^ > a i lalUj ot cuaipkiv
indifference to me. I am prepared for tner) c\entuikt}. It o luj dd>
today, and b> next Monday shall all he at wdrJ

Two or tinec times in (he course of the inier\!ew Hitler slnticeJ: “i
Will smash the C/echs,"** and when Sir Hoiacc Wiluvj kt’l he I: ul ha'e
doubt that Hitler meant what he saaL As soon as Wilscm had gon.
Hiller sent for his adjutant, Schmundu and at I pan. itrileicd tl.e
movement of the assault uoib, twenty-one reinfoiccd rcriincnt% toialhisp
seven divisions, up to their action static^n^. lliey must he icady to fo
into action on 3b September. A concealed nu^bil /niton was pul info
operation, including that of li\c fmlher dnision^ m VVestein (jenTatn>.‘

Yet Hitler had nor slaoinicd the door. I \en at the !ie:yhi of his freii/\
in the Sporipalmi the mghl befuic he had still kit i>pen the alternaliw
to war which he had put forward at Gudesberg. As the das of the 27ih
wore on, the pendulum began to suing hack from the ‘ ull-oi-iaihustb'
mood of the SporipaiaM to one of more rational calculiluva. Wiiilc
Ribbentrop and Hiinnilcr were in facoui <i' war, tf^cse were others in
Hitler's entourage who pressed him to make a setlleoient, among tiiem
Goering. Events began to support their arguments. In particular, the
news that Great Britain and France were taking actne steps in prepar-
ation for W'ur, and Sir Horace Wilson\ warning iliai Biii.iin would
support France impressed Huler mt>rc than ali Mr. CdKunf7erlain\
appeals.

At this moment the group of co^^pi^a^o^' Beck, Ostew

Schacht, Gisevius — who planned to carry out a Xetui and sci/e
Hitler by force, were making renewed prepas at ions, based on the use of
the division commanded by General BrockdodT-Rant/iiii at PotwIaiiL
This time they wcie convinced that they Winikl carry Haider, Beck's
successor as the Aimy Chief of SialT, and even petheps Braiichilwh,
the Army Coiumandei-in-Chief. with them. Hiller’s decision, ofcoiiistg
cannot have been influenced by a plot of which he remameti igniirant,
but the conspiracy reveals something of the dismay that was felt in the
Army High Command at Hitler's willingness to lun the risk of genera!
war—aiid of this Hitler was perfectly w^d^ aware. C^aiic independently
of the Wil/leheii-Schacht plot, a deputation of olTicer^- ('oloiicl
General von Lceh, Genera! von Hanneken and General Bodcnschal/,

^ KirkpatiickN notes. But Diu , Senes III, No IJ2S*a, Schinidt\ notes, (Ji),
D.II, No, 634. Schmidt, pages 40 .S- 9 ; Hendcfson: page 160.

“N.D. 388-PS, Iienvs 31-33.

H L.— -O*

425

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

one of Goenng’s right-hand men in the Luftwaffe — ^had called at the
Chancellery on the 26th to see Hitler. When he refused to talk to them,
they came again on the 27th and left a carefully reasoned memorandum
of eight pages giving grounds for the strong opposition in the Army to
an attack on Czechoslovakia which would involve the danger of war
with France and Great Britain. Among the factors to which they drew
attention were deficiencies in armaments — especially in the western
fortifications — deficiencies in morale, and the shortage of officers. The
Czech Army was believed to be capable, even without allies, of fighting
for three months and during that period it was highly unlikely that
the war would remain localized.^

Meanwhile, during the afternoon of the 27th a mechanized division,
in Ml field equipment, rumbled through the main streets of Berlin and
was greeted with almost complete silence by the crowds, who turned their
backs and disappeared into subways rather than look on. For a long
time, Hitler stood at the window to watch, and the total lack of en-
thusiasm — in contrast to the scenes of 1914 — ^is reported to have made a
singularly deep impression on him. Later that evening, at ten o’clock,
the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Raeder, arrived to reinforce the
Army’s arguments — an appeal that was given added weight by the news,
received during the night, that the British fleet was being mobilized.

“The strain upon this one man and upon his astounding will-power,”
Mr. Churchill writes, “must at this moment have been most severe.
Evidently he had brought himself to the brink of a general war. Could
he take the plunge in the face of an unfavourable public opinion and of
the solemn warnings of the Chiefs of his Army, Navy and Air Force?
Could he, on the other hand, afford to retreat after living so long upon
prestige?”^

Hitler, at any rate, was sufficiently interested in keeping open the line
to London to follow his outburst to Sir Horace Wilson with a letter
delivered to Mr Chamberlain at 10 30 p.m. on the 27th, in which he
sought to defend the attitude he had taken up and to answer the objec-
tions of the Czechs to accepting the Godesberg proposals. The letter
contained no hint of any modification, but the very fact that Hitler had
bothered to write it at all, and the closing sentence — “I iea\e it to your
judgment whether . . . you consider you should continue your effort . . .
to bring the Government in Prague to reason at the very last hour” —
spurred Mr. Chamberlain to make one final effort.^

^ The memorandum is printed by Bernhard Lavergne, in V Amiee politique fiangaise
et etran^ere (Pans, November, 1938).

^Winston Churchill. voL I, page 246.

® Text of Hitler’s letter; G.D., D.H, No 635.

426

tROM VIENNA 10 PK\GL’l, 1938-1939

With the morning of 28 September— '‘Black Wednesda>'*~“ iiW hope of
avoiding war seemed to ha\e gone. A sense of gloom hung user Bcrim,
no less than over Prague and Paris and London. On!> a few hours
remained before the time-limit filed by Hitler expired; if no satisfactor}'
reply had been received by two o'clock, it was uni\er^ail\ bcliesed that
full German mobilization would follow. Nowhere was the sense of
tension greater than at the Reich Chancellery, where in the course of the
next hour or two Hitler had to decide on peace or vwir.

Shortly after eleven o'clock Hiller was asked to reccisc the h”rench
Ambassador. Francois-Poncct brought an offer which went a good wdy
to meet the Godesberg demands, pro\ iding for the immediate occupation
of part of the Sudetenland by 1 October and the occupation of the rest in
a series of stages up to 10 October. The plan had not yet been accepted
by the Czechs, but if it w^as agieed to by Hitler the Prench Goseriimcnt
was prepared to demand that the Czechs accede to it as welt, and wa^uld
itself guarantee the smooth execution of the occupation.

The decisive move, however, appears to have been an appeal which
the British Government addressed to Mussolini. The Duce, who had
given general support to Hitler's claims against the Czechs in a recent
series of speeches, was now thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of a
European war for which Italy was ill-prepared. At the British request he
agreed to send Attolico, the Italian Ambassador in Berlin, to Hitler.

Breathless and hatless, Attolico arrived at the Chancellery wink
Hitler was still engaged with Fran^ois-Poncet. The Fuehrer agreed to
come out to speak to the Ambassador. Mussolini, Attolicu began, sent
assurances of full support wiiatever the Fuehrer decided, but he asked
him to delay mobilization for twenty-four hours in order to examine
the new^ proposals put forward by Paris and London. Mussolini's appeal
made an impression on Hitler; after a slight hesitation he agreed
to Attolico’s request. When he w^mt back to the French Ambassador
he was clearly preoccupied with Mussolini's message and told Francois-
Poncet briefly that he w^ould let him have a reply early in the afternoon.

The French Ambassador had not long been gone when Sir Nevile
Henderson arrived. He met Goenng and Neurath, who had both been
urging Hitler to accept a settlement, as they came out of the Cabinet
room. Henderson brought Chamberlain’s reply to HitlerN letter of the
night before. In a last appeal the British Prime Minister put forward the

427

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

suggestion of an international conference to discuss the necessary
arrangements to give Hitler what he wanted.^ Hitler again declined a
definite answer; he must consult first with Mussolini. Mussolini,
meanwhile, was again on the telephone to Attolico, who was instructed
to inform Hitler of the Duce’s support for Chamberlain’s proposal of a
conference and of Italy’s willingness to take part in such a meeting.
Almost certainly it was Mussolini’s intervention which turned the scale.
Hitler was prepared to listen to advice from Rome that he would never
have accepted from London or Pans; his brother dictator knew how to
handle his excessive touchiness of temperament and pride, while, by
sponsoring the conference himself, Mussolini enabled Hitler to agree
to it without loss of face. At the same time, as Mussolini pointed out,
the new proposals brought by Frangois-Poncet, which would form the
basis of any discussions, would allow Hitler to march his troops into the
Sudetenland by 1 October, the date to which he had publicly committed
himself.

Some time between one and two o’clock that afternoon Hitler made his
decision. He agreed to Mussolini’s suggestion, on condition that
Mussolini should be present in person and the conference held at once,
either in Munich or Frankfurt. Mussolini accepted and chose Munich.
The same afternoon invitations were sent to London and Paris — not,
however, to either Prague or Moscow.

Hitler was eager to see Mussolini before the conference began, and
early next day, 29 September, he boarded the Duce’s train at Kufstein
on the old German-Austrian frontier. To Ciano, Prince Philip of Hesse
confided: “The Fuehrer is only half satisfied.” According to Italian ac-
counts, Hitler greeted Mussolini with an elaborate exposition, illus-
trated with a map, of his plans for a lightning attack on Czechoslovakia,
followed by a campaign against France If these accounts are to be
believed, it was Mussolini’s influence which persuaded Hitler to give
the conference a chance and not to assume that it would fail from the
begimimg. Fie quietened Hitler’s suspicions with the renewed assurance
that, should the conference break down, Italy would support Germany.

The meeting of the two dictators with the British and French Prime
Ministers began in the newly built Fuehrerhaus on the Konigsplatz at
12.45 p.Ei. Hitler, pale, excited and handicapped by his inability to
speak any other language but German, leaned a good deal on Mussohni.
Indeed, Mussolini seem»s to have been more at his ease than anyone else
and to have played the leading part in the conference, partly because of
^ Text in Bnt, Doc., Senes III, vol II, No. 1,158.

FROM VIFNNA. lO PR \riU% 1938-1^)39

his ability to speak the other'.' langua^e^. HilL*!. iawcsei, !eii the
meeting in little doubt of what was required of it. f!e !si*! aireoly
declared in his Sportpa!a:s! ‘-pcech that he Wimli in u % ca ir.rv' vi u i
I October. He had receised the answer that tiU'. ucfioa woiiki hasc liu*
character ofan act of \io1ence. Hence thetask ’dTo>t:U> l.etheailiou
from such a character. Action, howeser, must be taken af niiwC.'''

Mussolini provided the Conference vsith a baa-* fur b>

producing a meinorandiini which e\Lntual!> biruied Vic Khis of ihe
Munich Agreement. The hiMors of this Mem^arandum of sortie
interest. It kid been drafted the da> before by Ncuratlu (ii.H‘ring afui
Weizsacker llhe State Secretar> in the hi)reign Offsai lu order to fore-
stall Ribbentrop; it had l>een shown to Hitler h> Ch.emc irol then
secretly put in the hands of AUohco foi dispatch to Rome
now brought it out as his own draft, before Ribbentrop cctkd put for-
ward an alternative, and so got the conterince over ils iirsi iHsrdk'
Attempts by Chamberlain and Daladier to secure lepresentatiort for the
Czechs produced no results' Hitler refused catepuiicullv !i) admit them
to the conference. Either the proMein v.as one hcivecn ticrm.inv and
Czechoslovakia, which could be sealed bv force in a foitmchl ; c^r it uus
a problem for the Clrcat Powers, in which case tae> niasl lake the
responsibility and impose their sealemeni on the ( /ccio.

The conference had been so hastily improvised that it lacked any
organ i/xiti on. No minutes were taken: the delegations ‘►a! m easy chairs
scattered round a large circle, and after the adjnurnmen* for liirsli in
the middle of the afternoon ambassads'irs, otOciafs and adjisuinls dipped
into the room to foim an audience lining the w.db. ifie ycnera! cIk-
cussion was constant!} breaking down into oKhvidual .jriiineriis or
conversations, and this was facilitated h\ the diiriciilliiN of iranslalKin.
There were constant interrupuooN while menbeis of cwie dclegatnm or
another went in and out to prepare allcnialive dmfi^ Mr C'hamhcrliiii,
the ex-Chancellor of the Hvchequer. was charactensfcally obstinate
about such questions as compencition for proper!}, a qucNlion winch
Hiller, equal!} characteristically, biushed aside with angry indifference.
Finally, in the early hours of the morning of 30 Sepieiiiber, agieenient
was reached, and the two Dictators left to the British and Erench the
odious task of communicating to the C/cchs the terms for the punuion
of their country."

^ Gernkin FO Memorandum on ihe iaO rik^nrie Ktween 12 45 and 1 p.m ,
G D , D II, No 670

2 Sources tor the actuaf eonicieni-c* Sir H WilMnfs note«:. Dm. FhfC., 3rd Senes,
voi. il, No. 1,227, Geimiui Meiiioianda, G D., D.ll, Nrs 671) and 674; Wei/sackei ‘
pages 153-5; Schmidt: pages 413-6; I lancois-Puncct. eliapki X; fleridcisoir
pages 166-7.

429

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Even on paper the Munich Agreement contained few substantial vari-
ations from the proposals of the Godesberg Memorandum. On 1
October German troops marched into the Sudetenland, as Hitler had
demanded, and in carrying out the Agreement the Germans were able to
brush aside the few limitations the Western Powers had tried to add. The
promised plebiscite was never held and the frontiers when finally drawn
followed strategic much more than ethnographical lines, leaving two
hundred and fifty thousand Germans in Czechoslovakia, and including
eight hundred thousand Czechs in the lands ceded to the Reich. Czecho-
slovakia lost her system of fortifications — ^which greatly impressed the
German generals when they inspected them — ^together with eleven
thousand square miles of territory. To this must be added crippling
industrial losses and the disruption of the Czech railway system. Presi-
dent Benes was forced to go into exile and one of the first acts of the new
regime was to denounce the alliance with Russia. On 10 October the
Czechs ceded the Teschen district to Poland, and on 2 November
Ribbentrop and Ciano dictated the new Czech-Hunganan frontier at a
ceremony in the Belvedere Palace at Vienna from which the two other
signatories of the Munich Agreement and the guarantors of Czecho-
slovakia were blatantly excluded.

On the night of the Munich Conference General Jodi wrote in his
diary:

The Pact of Munich is signed. Czechoslovakia as a Power is out. . . . The
genius of the Fuehrer and his determination not to shun even a world war
have again won victory without the use of force. The hope remains that the
incredulous, the weak and the doubters have been converted and will
remain that way.^

Hitler’s prestige rose to new heights in Germany, where relief that war
had been avoided was combined with delight m the gams that had been
won on the cheap.

Abroad the effect was equally startling, and Mr. Churchill described
the results of the Munich settlement in a famous speech on 5 October,
1938:

At Berchtesgaden ... £1 was demanded at the pistol’s point. When it was
given (at Godesberg), £2 was demanded at the pistol’s point. Finally the
Dictator consented to take £1 17s. 6d. and the rest in promises of good-will
i Jodi’s diary; ND. 1,780-PS.

430

FROM VltNMA TO PRAOtH, I93S-I‘J39

for the future. . . . Wc are in the presence of a disaster «it Ihe first iiiag*

nitude.

Austria and the Sudetenland within si\ nuinilis teprc'^enlcd the
triumph of those methods of pohticai warfare which Iht!er had so
sedulously applied in the past li\e years, fits diagnosis of the weakness
of the Western democracies, and of the international clrrisions which
prevented the formation of a united front agaensi liinL had been
brilliantly vindicated. Pise years after coming to power lie had raised
Germany from one of Ihe lov^est points t)f her hiNlof} to tlic position of
the leading Power in Europe— and this not on]} wiihiiul war, but wdh
the agreement of Great Britain and f ranee. The taclics of legality had
paid as big dividends abroad as at homey

The fact that the Prime Minister of Great Britain Iiad twice flown to
Germany to intercede with him, and on the third tKWisiufi had hurried
across Europe with the heads of the iTendi and Italian Governments
to meet him at the shortest possible notice, coiisiituled a personal
triumph for Hiller. He can scarcely have failed to appreciate the fact
that, twenty years after the end of the hirst Work! War, he had diclaied
terms to the victorious Powers of 191H in the very city in the back streets
of which he had begun his career as an unknown agitator.

Yet Hitler was more irritated than dated by his triumph. The morning
after the Munich Agreement was signed, when C'hamlserlain called on
the Fuehrer in his Munich flat, Paul Schmidt, who was present to
interpret, describes Hitler as moody and preoccupied. The news that
Chamberlain had been given an ovation as he diove thfoiif-'h the streets
of Munich — in contrast to Berlin's sullen icceptioii of the mechanized
division— further annoyed him, W'heii Hitler returned to Beilin he
exclaimed angrily to his S.S. entourage: 'That fellow Chamberlain has
spoiled my entry into Prague.''^

After Munich the view gained currency outside Germany that Hitler
had been bluffing all the time, that he had always had a ‘'Munich'" in
view, and that he laughed up his sleeve when C liamherlain failed to
cal! his bluff and took his threats at face value. This view is one of the
assumptions which most strongly colour discussion of the Munich crisis
even today. It does not, however, correspond with the impressions of
those who saw Hitler at the time. If those impressions are put together it
is a very different picture of Hitler’s state of mind which emerges.

On the view taken here Hitler was genuinely undecided up to noon

* The remark was overheard by Schacht, who referred to It at Nuremberg; N.P.,
part XIII, page 4.

43!

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

of 28 September, when he received the message from Mussolini, whether
to risk war or not. The hesitation was not, as Chamberlain thought,
between getting the Sudetenland by force or by negotiation, but between
getting the Sudetenland and overrunning the whole of Czechoslovakia.
Hitler had been impressed by the events of 27 September both by the
evidence of German lack of enthusiasm for a war and by the urgent warn-
ings from the Army and the Navy of the chance of defeat, but it was not
until he received the message from Mussolini that he finally made up
his mind to postpone the order to mobilize. For the message from
Mussolini not only sought to persuade him of the advantages of such a
course, but implied, to Hitler’s suspicious mind, that if he went on he
would go on alone. Goermg later told Weizsacker that “he knew from
Hitler that two reasons had moved him to choose peaceful methods:
fiist, doubts as to the warlike disposition of the German people; and
second, the fear that Mussolini might definitely leave him in the
lurch.”^

Even when he had agreed to the conference Hitler continued to have
doubts. The indignation against the Czechs into which he had lashed
himself, his pride and sensitivity to prestige, his ingrained dislike of
negotiation, his preference for violence, his desire for a sensational
success for the new German Army he had created, the recurrent thought
of the original plan to secure the whole of Czechoslovakia — all these were
factors liable to start up once more the conflict in his mmd. In short,
Hitler at Munich was still only half convinced that he had taken the right
decision, and this is borne out by his behaviour after the Agreement was
signed.

The German High Command were only too relieved at avoiding war,
and at Nuremberg General Keitel admitted that they “did not believe
themselves to be strong enough at that moment to break through the
fortifications of the Czechoslovak frontier.” But Hitler regarded liis
generals as defeatists. He was more impressed by the arguments of
Ribbentrop and Hinimlei that Germany had failed to exploit the West-
ern Powers’ fear of war to tlie full. The fact that Britain and France
had agreed to impose the Munich terms on Czechoslovakia suggested
that, if he had held on and ordered his troops to attack, they would
never have intervened. By allowing himself to be persuaded into
accepting a negotiated settlement. Hitler came to believe that he had been
baulked of the triumph he had really wanted, the German armoured
divisions storming across Bohemia and a conqueror’s entry into the
Czech capital. This was still his objective.

^ Ernst von Wcizsackci Memoirs (English translation, London, 1951), page 154
432

FROM VIENNA 10 PRAGUE, 193S-1939

It was clear to me from the fir^ moment [ffitlcr Liter admiitedl that I could
not be satisfied with the Sudeten territory. That was oiil> a partial soliitiond
Thus the old conflict, only half suppressed, was revived retrospectively.

The criticism which began to be heard of the Munidi in

Great Britain and France, and the fact that the British Cioveriuiiem
proposed to increase, not reduce, its rearmament programme,
roused Hitler’s anger. At Saarbiiicken, on 9 October, he reloited by
announcing the strengthening of Germany’s western loitiLculion\
adding:

It would be a good thing if people in Great Britain wc‘uld gradually drop
certain airs which they have inherited from the Versiiltes period. We
cannot tolerate any longer the tutelage of goverovs^ev. Iiitiuines of lliilisli
politicians concerning the fate of Germans wPlnn the cif the

Reich—or of others belonging to the Reich -- aic not an piace. ...Me would
like to give these gentlemen the advice that thev diould bus) dtcmscive^
with their own affairs and leave us in peace.-

For a moment Hitler seems to have considered the possibilil} iT still
carrying out his full programme. Some time in the fmst fen day> of
October he sent Genera! Keitel four questions to which lie wanted an
immediate reply:

(1) What leinforcements are necessary in the present MtuaCioii to break all
Czech resistance m Bohemia and Morav la ?

(2) How much time is required for the regrouping or moving up of new
forces ?

(3) How much time will be lequned for the same purpose if it h executed
after the intended demobilization measures?

(4) How much time would be required to achieve the state of readincs-^ of
1 October?®

On reflection Hitler lei matters stand for the time being, but his
intention of going a stage fuither was never in doubt, and a new directive
for the Armed Forces wus issued on 21 October which listed, immedi-
ately after measures to defend Germany, preparations to liquidate the
remainder of Czechoslovakia.^

The well-meaning eftbrts of the appeasers during the next months,
far from mollifying, only irritated Hitler further. He objected to thl^»
attempt to put him on his best behaviour, to treat him as a giwemess
treats a difficult chiid, appealing to sw'cet reason and his better instincts.
After Munich he was more detei mined than ever nut to be drawn into
the kind of general settlement which was the object of Chamberlain’s
policy, Jf England wanted a settiement with Germany it was quite

^ Hitler's speech to his C.-smC.s, 23 November, 1939. N.D. 789-FS.

2 Baynes vol. U, pages 1,532-7. N.D 3KH-PS, ncm 4.S, * N.O. €-136.

433

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

simple, all she had to do was to give him a free hand in Europe and
stop ducking like a fussy hen about what happened east of the Rhine, a
sphere of influence which Germany now claimed as her own. Hitler
refused to make any concessions in return for the gestures of appease-
ment offered to him; he was interested in appeasement only in so far as
it was the equivalent of capitulation and the complete abandonment of
British interest m continental affairs.

The speech at Saarbriicken in which he had attacked Churchill, Eden
and Duff Cooper as warmongers was followed by others in similar vein,
at Weimar on 6 November and at Munich on 8 November. At Munich
Hitler declared :

National Socialist Germany will never go to Canossa ! If the rest of the world
obstinately bars the way to recognition of our rights by the way of negoti-
ation, then there should be no surprise that we secure for ourselves our rights
by another way,^

On the night of 9-10 November a carefully organized pogrom against
the Jewish population throughout Germany was carried out as revenge
for the murder of a Nazi diplomat by a young Jew in Paris. These events
produced a reaction of horror and indignation in both Great Britain
and the United States. President Roosevelt recalled the American
Ambassador in Berlin, and the British Press was unanimous in its
condemnation of the Nazi outrages. Hitler flew into a rage. Hatred of
the Jews was perhaps the most sincere emotion of which he was capabk-
To his resentment against Britain was added the fury that the British
should dare to express concern for the fate of the German Jews. He now
saw London as the centre of that Jewish world conspiracy with which he
had long inflamed his imagination, and Great Britain as the major
obstacle in his path.

Hitler’s diplomatic activity during the winter of 1938-1939 was
directed, not towards London, but towards Pans and Rome.,

In the first case his aim seems to have been to detach France from
Great Britain. In mid-October, when Fran^ois-Poncet, the French
Ambassador, was about to leave Berlin to take up a new appointment
in Rome, Hitler invited him to pay a farewell visit to the Obersalzberg.
He received him, not m the Berghof, but in the pavilion he had built
six thousand feet up m the mountains. In a famous dispatch Frangois-
Poncet has described the scene: the approach up a nme-mile-long road
cut through the rock, and the ascent in a lift with doubfe doors of bronze.
At the summit he stepped out into an immense circular room surrounded
^ Baynes: vol. II, page 1,557.

434

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

by pillars, with fantastic views of the mountain pcaks„ ‘In the im-
mediate vicinity of the house, which gives the impressiim of being
suspended in space, an almost overhanging vail of bare rock rises up
abruptly. The whole, bathed in the twilight of an autumn eiening, is
grandiose, wild, almost hallucinating.’'^

Hitler did not disguise his dissatisfaction with the results of Munich
and launched into an angry tirade against Great Britain. But he was
eminently reasonable on the subject of Franco-German relations, sug-
gesting a joint declaration guaranteeing the existing frontier, and thus
confirming Germany’s abandonment of any claim to A.lsacc»Lorraifie,
together with an agreement to hold consultations m all questions
likely to affect mutual relations.

The French Government prosed amenable to the suggestion, anil the
proposed Declaration was signed on 6 December when Riblicnfrop
visited Pans and had long talks with the French Foreign Minister,
Georges Bonnet. Ribbentrop later claimed that Bonnet accepted his
view that Czechoslovakia was to be considered as lying in the German
sphere of interest and no longer an issue for discussion between l*raiicc
and Germany. Whatever the truth of this— and it was indignantly
denied by Bonnet — it is obvious that this was the object which the
Germans hoped to obtain by their gesture towards I ranee.

France’s alliances with Poland and the U.S.S.R., Ribbeniriip claimed
to have told Bonnet, were ‘‘an atavistic remnant of the Versailles men-
tality.”^ The price of German friendship, in short, was a disavowal of
France’s old interest in Europe cast of the Rhine.

In the meantime Hiller was at pains to strengthen his relations with
Italy. At Munich Ribbentrop had produced a draft for a defensive
military alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan, and at the end of
October the German Foreign Minister visited Rome to urge the Diice
to put his signature to the treaty.

The Fuehrer is convinced [Ribbentrop told the ftaliansj that we must
inevitably count on a war with the Western Democracies in the coui sc of a few
years, perhaps three or four. . . . The Czechoslovak crisis lias shown our
power! We have the advantage of the initiative and are ma<>ters of the
situation. We cannot he attacked. The military situation is excellent, as
from the month of September (1939) vve couhl face a war with the great
democracies.®

^Dispatch of M. Frangois-Poncet. 20 October, WH. French Yeikm Botik
(English translation, London, 1939), No 18.

® German Mmutc of the conversation between Ribheiilrop and Bonnet in Pans,
6 December, 1938, G.D., Senes D, vol IV, No. 370.

® Ciano's Minute of Ribbentrop’s conversation with the Ducc and hiniself, 28
October, 1938, Ckmo's Diplomatic Papers, pages 242-6.

435

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

To please Mussolini, Hitler agreed to a joint German-Italian arbi-
tration of the disputed frontier between Hungary and Slovakia —
although he had previously resisted the idea — and allowed himself to be
persuaded into conceding to Hungary, Mussolini’s protege, the three
towns of Kassa, Muiikacs and Ungvar. Mussolini was wary of commit-
ting himself to an outright military alliance, of which he had fought shy
throughout the summer and autumn. He resented Ribbentrop’s visit to
Paris in December and the German-French Declaration at precisely
the moment when Italy was raising her own claims to Tunisia, Corsica
and Nice. Yet the very fact that Mussolini was beginning a new quarrel
with France forced him back into his old position of dependence on
Germany. As Hitler had astutely realized at the time of the Abyssinian
War, if Mussolini continued to cherish his bombastic imperial ambitions
he would always be forced to come begging to Berlin for support in the
end, whether he liked it or not. Sure enough, at the beginning of the New
Year, after two months of hesitation, the Duce suppressed his doubts
and instructed Ciano to inform Ribbentrop that he was willing to accept
the suggested treaty.

In his speech of 30 January Hitler was lavish in his praise of Fascist
Italy and her great leader. It was to be some months yet before the Pact
of Steel was actually signed, but Hitler was content: he had Mussolini
where he wanted him, the working partnership of the Axis had been
reaffirmed, and he felt secure enough to make his next move — ^without,
however, informing his partner in advance.

What would Hitler’s next move be? No question more absorbed the
attention of every diplomat and foreign correspondent in the winter of
1938-1939. Every tumour was caught at and diligently reported.
Immediately after Munich, Dr. Funk, SchachFs successor at the
Ministry of Economics, went on a tour of the Balkans. His visit under-
lined the state of economic dependence upon Germany m which all
these countries — Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia — now
found themselves. Their political docility was secured by other means
besides preferential trade and currency agreements — by the organization
of the German minorities; by subsidies to local parties on the Nazi
model, like the Iron Guard m Rumania; by playing on internal divisions
between different peoples and different classes m the same country; by
encouraging the territorial claims of one country, like Hungary, and
436

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

rousing the fears of another, like Rumania. After the annexation of
Austria and the capitulation of Munich these countries had to recognize
that they were in the German sphere of influence and rau^t shape their
policy accordingly. They could pursue tactics of procrastinalum and
evasion, and still attempt to play off Rome against Berlin, but ilm wdj
the limit of their independence.

Precisely because of this dependence, howe\er, and the success of
Germany’s methods of peaceful penetration, it seemed unlikely tlut
Hitler would attempt a coup in this direction. It svas lo the ea>t and
north-east, rather than the south-east, that the rumour^ persistent 1}
pointed — the occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia, the annexation
of Danzig, the return of Memel from Lithuania, or— the most iiiiercsling
possibility of all — the use of the easternmost part of C/cchosb\akia,
Ruthema, with its Ukrainian population, as a base from v^hich to stir
up discontent among the Ukrainians of the U.S.S.R. and of Poland.

After Munich Hitler did not hesitate to express hi.s disappoinlmeni
with the Hungarians for failing to press their claims on the Czechs more
pertinaciously He showed considerable impatience vith the Hungarian
demands on Slovakia, and refused to agree lo their annexation
Ruthenia, with a common Hungarian -Polish frontier. Instead an
autonomous Ruthenia was set up within the new Czechoslovakia, m
the same relationship towards its German patrons as the autonomous
Slovakia. The little town of Chust, which was the capital Ruthenia,
soon became the centre of a Ukrainian national movement, eager to
bring freedom to the oppressed Ukrainian populations of Poland and
of the Soviet Union.

The German game in this backwater of Eastern Europe roused .diarp
interest in the European capitals, especially in Mi>sct)w and Warsaw.
Poland and Russia took the threat sufficiently seriously to discover a
common interest, despite their inveterate hostility: political and trade
talks were initiated, and the pact of non-aguression between the two
countries reaffirmed.

This Polish-Soviet may have played a part in persuading

the Germans to postpone their plans for a (ireatcr L'kraine. At any rale,
Ruthenia, and the uses to which it might be put, began to attract less
attention in the New Year. By the end <T Januai} it was a ddlereiit set of
anxieties which was beginning to occupy the Foreign Ministries in
London and Paris.

On 24 January Lord Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, wrote an
appreciation of the European situation, which was to be laid befiire
President Roosevelt and wffiich was subsequently sent to the French

437

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Government as well Lord Halifax began by saying that he had received
a large number of reports about Hitler’s mood and intentions.

Accordii a these reports. Hitler is bitterly resentful at the Munich Agree-
ment which baulked him of a localized war against Czechoslovakia and
demonstrated the will to peace of the German masses in opposition to the
warmongering of the Nazi Party. He feels personally humiliated by this
demonstration. He regards Great Britain as primarily responsible for this
humiliation, and his rage is therefore directed piincipally against this
country which he holds to be the chief obstacle now to the fulfilment of
his further ambitions.

As early as November there were indications which gradually became
more definite that Hitler was planning a further foreign adventure for the
spring of 1 939. At first it appealed that he was thinking of expansion in the
east, and m December the prospect of establishing an independent Ukraine
under German vassalage was freely spoken of m Germany. Since then
reports indicate that Hitler, encouraged by Ribbentrop, Himmler and
others, is considering an attack on the Western Powers as a preliminary to
subsequent action in the east.^

Lord Halifax then went on to list four possibilities:

(!) Hitler might support Italian claims on France and use this as a pretext
for starting a war, to which Italy would be committed from the start.

(2) Hitler might attack Holland. In this case, the Dutch East Indies might
go to Japan.

(3) He might put forward colonial demands in the form of an ultimatum.

(4) He might launch a sudden aerial attack on England.

The British Government took the threat to Holland sufficiently
seriously to sound out the Dutch Government, and to consider what
steps should be taken to come to Holland’s assistance. Subsequently,
the possibility of a German attack on Switzerland was also canvassed.

What substance there was m these rumours it is not possible to say on
the evidence available. If the Germans took up the Ukraine project with
any seriousness at the end of 1938 it was only to drop it again in the early
months of 1939. Whether Hitler gave any serious consideration to an
attack in the west seems still more doubtful.

It is in the directives which he issued to the Armed Forces that we
have the surest indication of the wuy m which Hitler’s mind was moving.
There are three such directives in the six months between Munich and
Prague/-^ In the first, issued on 21 October, the Army and the other

^ Brit Doc , 3rd Senes, vo! IV, No 5 and No 40; Lord Halifax to the Bntish
Embassy m Washington, and to the British Embassy in Pans.

2 These are, respectively, N D , C-136, C-137, C-138.

438

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

Forces are ordered to be prepared at all times for three eveiitualitie*,;^^
the defence of Germany, the liquidation of Czechoslovakia, and the
occupation of MemeL On 24 November Hiller added a fourth even-
tuality, the occupation of Danzig, and on 17 December he iiistruclcd
the Army to make its preparations to occupy the rest of C/echo^lovakiii
on the assumption that no resistance worth mentioning need be expected.

As these are the objectives which Hitler in fact proceeded to realize
during the next twelve months, the likelihood is that these were ahvays
uppermost in his mind from the weeks immediate!) after Munich.
This does not exclude the possibility that the Ukraine, c\cn perhaps an
attack in the west, may have interested him for a time and been discussed
m his entourage, but, so far as we know, none of these other schcines
ever got to the stage of being reduced to a directive.

In point of time, the preliminary moves for securing Danzig overlap
the preparations for the liquidation of Czechoslovakia, hut it will lx*
convenient to treat relations with Poland separately and to conclude this
chapter, which began with the occupation of Vienna in March, 1938*
with the occupation of Prague in March, 1939.

After the cession to Poland and Hungary of a further fne thousand
square miles of territory, with a population of well over a million
souls, the Government in Prague was obliged to grant far-rcaching
autonomy to the two eastern provinces of Slovakia and Riilhcnia, each
of which had its own Cabinet and Parliament and maintained only
the most shadowy relation with the Central Goveinnicnt. I:\en this did
not satisfy the Germans, and the German P'oreign Office archives for
these months^ contain a long series of further demands upon the unfor-
tunate Czechs.

The elTorts of the Prague Goveinmerit to comply with these demands
entirely failed to assuage the hatred Hitler still displayed towvirds the
Czech people. When Chvalkovsky, the Czech Foreign Munster, visited
Berlin in January, 1939, Hitler reproached him with the failure of the
Czechs to draw the consequences of what had happened and to break
with their past, or to abandon hope of change in the future as a result
of international conflict.

The German documents in fact leave the clear lmp^e^sion that Hitler
was only seeking a favourable opportunity to carry ouf the dcstmction
of the Czechoslovak State of which he had been baulked at Munich, and
that it was for this reason that the Germans steadil} refused to give the
guarantee for which the Czechs anxiously pleaded.

1 Published in G.D., Senes D, vol. IV (London, 1951), chapter L

439

4 *

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

There were considerable practical advantages to be derived from such
a move. The German Army was anxious to replace the long, straggling
German-Czech frontier, which still represented a deep enclave in
German territory, with a short easily held line straight across Moravia
from Silesia to Austria. The German Air Force was eager to acquire new
air bases in Moravia and Bohemia. The seizure of Czech Army stocks^
and of the Skoda arms works, second only to Krupps, would represent
a major reinforcement of German strength. The rearmament of Germany
was beginning to impose a severe strain on the German economy and
standard of living. The occupation of Bohemia and Moravia would help
to alleviate this strain. Czech reserves of gold and foreign currency,
Czech investments abroad and the agricultural and manpower resources
of the country could be put to good use. At the same time, another cheap
success in foreign policy would distract attention from hardships at home
'and add to the prestige of the regime.

The role of fifth column, which had been played by the Sudeten
Germans in 1938, was now assigned to the Slovaks, assisted by the Ger-
man minority left within the frontiers of the new State. The demand
of the Slovak extremists for complete independence had only been inten-
sified by the grant of autonomy after Munich, and was carefully culti-
vated by the Germans. As early as mid-October, 1938, a meeting took
place between Goering, two of the Slovak leaders, Durcansky and
Mach, and Karmasin, the leader of the German minority in Slovakia.
After Durcansky had declared that the Slovak aim was complete in-
dependence, with very close ties with Germany, Goering assured him
that the Slovak efforts would be suitably supported. ‘'A Czech State
minus Slovakia is even more completely at our mercy. Air bases m
Slovakia for operations against the east are very important.”^ On
12 February Hitler received Bela Tuka, the leader of the Slovak
National Party, together with Karmasin, in the Reich Chancellery.
Encouraged by the Fuehrer, Tuka declared that further association
with the Czechs had become an impossibility for the Slovaks. “I entrust
the fate of my people to your care."'^

The stage was therefore well set when, m March, the Prague Govern-
ment played straight into Hitler’s hands by taking drastic and unexpec-

^ Hitler later ga\e a figure of 1,500 planes (500 front line), 469 tanks, over 500 A. A.
guns, 43,000 machine-guns, o\er a million rifles, a thousand million rounds of rifle
and three million rounds of field-gun ammunition, as the total of the loot acquired

in March, 1939.

^German Minutes of the conversation, dated before 17 October, 1938, G.D,,
D.IV, No. 68.

Mbid, No. !6g.

440

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

ted action to deal with the separatist intrigues which were going on in
both the Slovak and Ruthene capitals. On 6 March ihc FicMdcnl of
Czechoslovakia, Hacha, dismissed the Ruthenian Governnunt fnm
office, and, on the night of 9-10 March, the Skivak as wdl I cr* ihc
moment Hiiicr w^as taken by surprise. He was about to leave for \^eiina
to take part in the celebrations of the anniversary of the An^^hbhs,
while Goering was on holiday at San Remo. Ii did not lake hiiri long,
however, to grasp that here was the opportunity for wliidi he had been
waiting.

Some of the Slovak leaders seem to have shown a last-niiimte reluc-
tance to play the part for which they were cast, but they wcie prodded
in the back by Karmasin and the well-organized Gennari minonty.
Durcansky, one of the dismissed Ministers, w.is hiirned across the
border in the German ConsuFs car. Over the Vienna radio he denounced
the new Slovak Government formed by Sidor, and called on the Shivak
Hlinka Guard to rise. Arms w^erc brought across the river from Austria
and distributed to ihc Germans, who occupied the Government
buildings in Bratislava. The British Consul in the city reported that the
enthusiasm of the Slovak population was in fact \eiy luLcwarm, and
continued so even after the declaration of Slovak independence. But
Hitler was not interested in what the Slovaks thought: all he wanted was
the declaration, and he took drastic measures U) get it.

It had already been announced in Berlin on the morning of 1 1 March
that Tiso, the deposed Slovak Premier, had appealed to Hitler, 'llial
night (according to the account later put together by the British Minister
m Prague^ the two chief German representatives in Vienna. Bucrckel
and Seyss-inquart, acciimpanied by live German generals, arrived in
Bratislava and pushed their way into a mcelmg of the Slovak Cioverri-
ment. Bucrckel is reported to have told the new Preniiei, Sidor, that they
must proclaim the independence of Slovaknt at once, or Hifier— who
had decided to settle the fate of C/echoslov alia '—would disinlerest
himself in the Slovaks' future.

For the moment Sidor gave an evasive answer, but eail? the next
morning, Sunday the 12th, Tiso, the deposed Premier, requested a
further Cabinet meeting. When this met— in the olliccs of the news-
paper Slovak, to escape German interference— Tiso told the Cabinet
that Bucrckel had brought him an invitation from llillcT to go at once
to Berlin. This he had been obliged to accept, for tfie cimscquences of
refusal, Bucrckel had added, would be the occupation of Bratislava by
German troops and of Eastern Slovakia by the Hungarians. Accordingly
^ Brit, Doc , 3rd Senes, vul. IV, No. 473

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

he proposed to leave by train for Vienna early on Monday and be back
by Tuesday night. No sooner, however, did Tiso reach Vienna than he
was bundled into a plane and flown to Berlin.

In the early evening of Monday, 13 March, Hitler received Tiso and
Durcansky m the Reich Chancellery. Tiso, a short, stout Catholic
priest, who once told Paul Schmidt: “When I get worked up, I eat half
a pound of ham, and that soothes my nerves,” had first to listen to a long,
angry speech in which Hitler denounced the Czechs and expressed as-
tonishment at his own forbearance.

The attitude of the Slovaks, Hitler continued, had also been dis-
appointing. After Munich he had prevented Hungary from occupying
Slovakia m the belief that the Slovaks wanted independence, and had
thereby risked offending his Hungarian friends. The new Slovak Premier,
Sidor, however, now declared that he would oppose the separation of
Slovakia from Czechoslovakia.

He had therefore [Hitler continued] permitted Minister Tiso to come here
m order to clear up this question m a \ery short time: whether Slovakia
wished to conduct her own affairs or not. ... It was not a question of days,
but of hours. ... If Slovakia wished to make herself independent he would
support this endeavour, and e\en guarantee it. If she hesitated ... he would
leave the destiny of Slovakia to the mercy of events, for which he was no
longer responsible. In that case he would intercede only for German
interests and these did not lie east of the Carpathians.

To add point to Hitler’s remarks, Ribbentrop conveniently produced a
message reporting Hungarian troop movements on the Slovak frontiers.

Tiso was then allowed to go. After further conversations with Ribben-
trop, Keppler and other Nazi officials, he rang up Bratislava, to request
the summoning of the Slovak Parliament for ten o’clock the next morn-
ing, and m the early hours of the morning returned to the Slovak
capital When the Deputies met, Tiso read out a proclamation of in-
dependence for Slovakia which he had rccei\ed from Ribbentrop already
drafted in Slovak. Attempts to discuss the proposal were blocked by
the leader of the German mmonty, Rarmasin, who warned the Deputies
to be careful lest the German occupation should be extended to Bratis-
lava. Whether they liked it or not, the Slovak Deputies had no option
but to accept the independence thrust uponthem,andbynoononTuesday,
14 March, the break-up of Czechoslovakia had begun. In the House of
Commons the next day Mr. Chamberlain gave the internal disruption
of the Czechoslovak State by the action of the Slovaks, before the
^ German Minute of the Conversation by Hewel ; N D. 2,802-PS.

442

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

Germans marched in, as the reason why Great Britain could no longer
be bound by any obligation to guarantee the frontiers of Oecfioslovakia.
Once again Hitler had shown his undcjstanding of the value of
“legality.”

Hitler was now ready to deal with the Czechs, According to a report
later sent to London by the British Embassy in Berlind his original
plan was for an ultimatum to the Czech Government, with a disphiy of
force in support, and it was only on the afternoon of 12 March that hr
decided to march in and hurriedly withdrew the ultimatum. Whatever
truth there was in this report, by 13 March the n€W!» from SUwakia had
been crowded out of the front pages of the German Press by \iolenl
stories of a Czech “reign of terror” directed against the German
in Bohemia and Moravia. “German Blood Flows again at BiumiA
“Unheard-of Czech Provocation of German Nationality,” “Humiliation
of German Honour” — -these were the familiar headlines. Not only tfic
wording, the French Ambassador noted, but even the incidents reported
were almost identical with those of August, 1938: the pregnant woman
struck down and trampled on, the German stuileiit beaten up, and so
on. Despite the efforts of the German minority to provoke the 1 /echs
there was little truth m any of these atrocity stories, apart fri)fii a hand-
ful of minor incidents. But they served their purpose, not least in
helping Hitler to whip up his owm indignation.

On Monday the 13th the Czech Government made a last effort
avert German action by a direct appeal to Hitler, and the following day
President Hacha and the Foreign Minister, Chvalkovsk), sef out for the
German capital by train. An hour before they left, the Hungarians
presented an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of all C'/ech troop%
from Ruthenia, and the President had not yet crossed the Czech frontier
when news reached Prague that German troops had already occupied
the important industrial centre of Moravska Ostrava,

In Berlin President Hacha was received with all the honours due to a
Head of State, was lodged in the Adlon Hotel and, when he reached the
Chancellery, found an S.S. Guard of Honour dn|\vn upjn the courtyard.
The irony was barely concealed. Not until after I a.iii, was the President
admitted to Hitler's presence, and he was quite unable to discover in
advance what would be discussed, lie found the Fuehier in his study,
^ Bni, Doc.j 3rd Series, vot. IV, No. 474.

443

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

companied by Goering, General Keitel and four other men. Ill at
se, politically inexperienced, old, tired and without a card in his hand,
acha tried to soften Hitler’s mood by ingratiating himself. He was,

5 said, an unknown person until recently; had taken no part in politics
lC was a judge), had rarely met either Benes or Masaryk and had felt
Lcir regime to be alien to him — “so much so that after the sudden
lange he had asked himself whether it was really a good thing for
zechoslovakia to be an independent State.” He had no grounds for
:)mplaint over what had happened m Slovakia, but he pleaded with the
uehrer for the right of the Czechs to continue to live their own national
fe.

When Hacha had finished his abject plea Hitler began to speak,
toce again he reviewed the course of his dealings with the Czechs; once
gam he repeated the charge that they had failed to break with the old
igimt of Benes and Masaryk.

Last Sunday, therefore, 12 March, for him the die was cast, ... He had no
longer confidence in the Czech Government. . . . This very morning at 6 a.m.
the German Army would invade Czechoslovakia at all points and the
German Air Force would occupy all Czech airports. There were two pos-
sibilities. The first was that the invasion of the German troops might develop
into a battle. This resistance would then be broken by force of arms. The
other was that the entry of the German troops should take place in a
peaceable manner, and then it would be easy for the Fuehrer to give to the
Czechs an individual existence on a generous scale, autonomy and a certain
amount of national freedom. . . .

If It came to a fight, m two days the Czech Army would cease to exist.
Some Germans would, of course, also be killed, and this would produce a
feeling of hatred which would compel him to refuse any longer to grant
autonomy. The world w^ould not care a jot about this. He felt sorry for the
Czech people when he read the foreign Press. It gave him the impression
expressed by the German proverb The Moor has done his dut> ; The Moor
may go. . . ,

This was the reason v\h> he had asked Hacha to come heie. That invitation
was the last good deed he would be able to render to the Czech people. . .
Pei haps Hacha’s visit might avert the worst. . . . The hours were passing.
At SIX o’clock (it was then nearly 2 a.m.) the troops would march m. He felt
almost ashamed to say that for eveiy Czech battalion a German division
would come. The military operation had been planned on the most generous
scale. He would advise him to withdraw now with Chvalkovsky, m order to
discuss what should be done.

When Hacha asked what could be done in so short a time. Hitler
mggested he should telephone to Prague.

444

FROM VIENNA TO PRAGUE, 1938-1939

Hacha asks whether the purpose of the invasion is to disarin the Czeoh
Army. This might, perhaps, be done in some other wa>. The Fuehrer sa>s
that his decision is irrevocable. Everyone knows what a decision by th^
fuehrer meana,^

At this point Hacha and Chvalkovsky were taken into another room
for further talks with Goering and Ribbentrop. During this inlerlucle
Goering threatened to destoy Prague by bombing and Hacha fainteti.
He was revived by an injection from Hitler’s doctor. More!!, who had
thoughtfully been kept m attendance. Before lhe> returned Hacha was
put through to Prague by telephone, and the Czech Govcrnmeni under-
took to order no resistance to the German advance. In the ineanlime
a draft communique had been prepared and was ready for Hacha\
signature when the Fuehrer received him again in his study shortly
before 4 a.m. Its smooth terms were a masterpiece of understatement.
The Fuehrer had received President Hacha at the latter’s request, and
the President “confidently placed the fate of tlie Czech people in tlic
hands of the Fuehrer.” Not a word was said of threats or invasion/
Hitler could hardly contain himself. He burst into his secretaries'
room and invited them to kiss him. “Children,” he declared, “this is !tie
greatest day of my life. I shall go down to history a:» the greatest
German.”*^

Two hours later German troops crossed the frontier. “Legality”
had been preserved, and when the British and French Ambassadors
called at the Wilhelrastrasse to deliver their inevitable protests they were
met with the argument that the Fuehrer had acted only at the request
of the Czech President, just as the occupation of Austria had been
undertaken only in response to the telegram sent by Seyss-Inquart.

By the afternoon of 15 March Hitler was on his way to Prague,
where he arrived the same evening, accompanied by Keifel, RibKmtrop
and Himmler. His proclamation to the German people revived the stories
of an “intolerable” reign of terror, which had forced him to intervene
to prevent the “complete destruction of all (srder in a territory . . . which
for over a thousand years belonged to the German Reich.”* That night
he spent in the palace of the Kings of Bohemia with the swastika waving
from its battlements. Hitler had paid off another of the historic grudges
of the old Hapsbiirg Monarchy, the resentment of the Germans of the
Empire in face of the Czech claim to equality, that iiiipertincnt claim he

^ Ckrman Minute by Hewcl; N D. 2,7^)K-PS,

^ Text of the communique, N.D. TC-IU,

® Zolier: op. at., page B4. Text ui Baynes: voL if, pages L585»6.

445

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

had first rejected m the working-class quarters of Vienna thirty years
before.

The next day, sitting in the Hradschin Castle, on the hill overlooking
Prague, Hitler reaffirmed the claim of the Germans to the territories of
Bohemia and Moravia in which the upstart Czechs had dared to establish
their own national state.

For a millennium [he wrote in the Proclamation of 16 March] the territories
of Bohemia and Moravia belonged to the Lebensraum of the German
people. Violence and stupidity tore them arbitrarily from iheir ancient
histone setting and at last through their inclusion in the artificial con-
struction of Czechoslovakia created a hot-bed of continual unrest. , . . The
Czechoslovak State has proved its inability to live its own internal life, and
in consequence has now fallen into dissolution.^

There followed the text of the decree establishing the Protectorate of
Bohemia and Moravia. As Secretary of State and Head of the Civil
Administration, the Czechs weie to receive the two former leaders of
the Sudeten German Party, K. H. Frank and Konrad Henlein. Hitler’s
revenge was complete.

An exchange of telegrams between Tiso and Hitler on the 16th placed
Slovakia, too, under German protection. German troops promptly
moved in to guarantee Slovakia’s newly won independence. Ruthenia,
however, which was no longer of interest to the Germans, was aban-
doned to the Hungarians. An appeal to Hitler and the proclamation of
Ruthenian independence had no effect. Hungarian troops marched in,
overrunning all opposition, and soon reached the Polish border, estab-
lishing the common frontier between Hungary and Poland which had
been the aim of the two countries at the time of Munich.

Hitler did not stay long in Czechoslovakia. After reviewing his troops
in Prague and paying a flying visit to Briinn, he was back in Vienna on
the 18th. There the Treaty of Protection between Germany and Slovakia
was drafted and initialled, before her final signature at Berlin on 23
March. Slovakia granted to Germany the right to maintain garrisons
in her territory and promised to conduct its foreign policy in the closest
agreement with her Protector. A secret protocol allowed Germany the
fullest rights in the economic exploitation of the country.'-^

As the year before in Austria, so now in Czechoslovakia, the speed
of the operation staggered the world. By the time the British and French
Ambassadors arrived to deliver their protests Hitler was already back
in Vienna, the Protectorate had been established and the Treaty with
^ Baynes: vol. II, pages 1,586-7.

®Text of Treaty, N.D. 1,439-PS; Text of Secret Protocol, N.D. 2,793-PS.

446

FROM \!fN\A ro PKAGtl, 1938-1939

Slovakia diawn up. Less than a \seck after Tisu had bc^n ‘uiai/iiuiicd ta
Berlin, only four da^s after Hacha% arrnal there, the ouupalum
complete, and German ganisonswere established m Pmeuis Biimn and
Slovakia.

Nowhere v^as the German action more relented than R(<me
Attolico, the Italian Ambassador in Bcrfm. fuid on1> been irdunms?
the Germain intentions on 14 March, and Csino ^roic iii Iks Diars.
'The Axis functions onI> in one i)f its parts which lend«; to p’^cponderuii .
and acts entirely on own initiative with iillle regard foi

The arri\a! of Philip of Hesse with liis ii>ua! iiiCHsaec of thanks for
Italy’s unshakcable support sctmd} nudhik'd Mussolini, " Fhc Italian'^
Will laugh at me,” he told Cuino; “'esery time flsiier occiipic** a cr^unfrs
he sends me a message.” The Ducc was gloomy and worried. 1 Iw‘
prospect of the expansion of Gennan influeiKc dow n tlie Danube and in
the Balkans, his own chosen sphere id interest, had shaken him badly,
butanger was tempered by tliccalculatnm that Hiller was now Uk^ power-
ful to oppose and that it was best to he on the winning side. German
reassurances that the Mediterranean and Adriatic were Italy ami that
Germany would ncser meddle there, Mussolini rcccoed with appro-
priate scepticism. The message was very mtcresting, he remarked lo In.
son-in-law, “provided we can behc\c it.” But by the same esciniig he had
swung back in favour of Ciermany again, expressing violent irritation
with the Western Democracies, and declaring: cannot change oui

policy now. After all we arc not pi>!itica! whpres .”

Mussolini was the prisoner of hi-v own policy, liiflcr’s sucicss ri^used
his envy, yet the more he attempted to imitate the I uehrer l!ic more
dependent lie became upon him. A pcr^onal letter ft^n Hftiei mi the
twentieth anniversary of the Pascist muveinent lielped lo sinootlie the
Duce’s ruffled feathers, ami by 26 March he wa^ making a ^pceGi full of
aggressive loyalty to the Axis, if he was to and compensation it nuist be
within the framework of the Axis, not outside it. The Duce’s eyes began
to wander towards Albania.

In London and Paris the eifccts of Hitler’s amp were more tar-
reaching. Prague has rightly been taken as the turning piiiot m British
foreign policy, the stage at whicfi the British Government, however
belatedly, abandoned hope of appeasing Hitler, and set to work, how-
ever ineptly, to organize re^-istance lo any furtfier aggiesstve move by
the German dictator. It was this change of attitude on the part of the
^ Clamps Dian\ 1943 (Unglish tfanslation, London, I947|, page 44,

447

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Western Powers which led logically to the outbreak of war six months
later, when Hitler attempted to repeat the tactics of Vienna and Prague
m the case of Danzig. For that reason Prague marks an important stage
in Hitler’s career, too. Thereafter, although he was extremely reluctant
to recognize it, the chances of further successes on the cheap in foreign
policy were steadily diminishing. A chapter was closed. If he persisted in
his plans, a new chapter would open in which his triumphs would have
to be achieved under new conditions.

Yet it is easy to be misled by this. It was, after all, only a change in
the circumstances, not in the character, of Hitler’s foreign policy which
took place with the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. Much has
been made of the fact that by his seizure of lands inhabited by Czechs,
not by Germans, Hitler had now departed from the principle of self-
determination to which he had hitherto appealed. It is certainly true that
it was this change of front which caught the attention of many people in
Western Europe who had hitherto been impressed by Hitler’s advocacy
of the right of the Germans to self-determination. Thus Sir Nevile
Henderson wrote: “By the occupation of Prague Hitler put himself
unquestionably m the wrong, and destroyed the entire arguable validity
of the German case as regards the Treaty of Versailles.”^

But it is not true, as Henderson goes on to say, that “after Prague,
Nazism ceased to be national and racial, and became purely dynamic
and felonious.” Nazism had always been dynamic. Hitler’s adoption of
the phraseology of national self-determination was no more to be taken
seriously than his use of the language of the League when that suited
his purpose. A master of opportunism, he used whatever pretext came to
hand — equality of rights, the defence of Europe against Bolshevism,
the Wilsonian right of self-determination, Germany’s need of Lebens-
raum. Prague destroyed a good many illusions outside Germany, but
it marked no essential change in Hitler’s policy. The destruction of
Czechoslovakia had been his aim at least since November, 1937, when
he had set it as his second objective after Austria in the secret conference
With his Commanders-in-Chief. And Czechoslovakia was only the
beginning, as Mein Kampf was there to show.

Those who had been taken m by the arguments of self-determination
made the same mistake as those who had imagined that Hitler would be
bound by the Nazi Party Programme: they had failed to recognize that
Hitler had only one programme, power without limit, and that the rest
was window-dressing. This had been his programme before Prague,
as it remained his programme afterwards. The only question was where
^ Henderson: page 209.

448

i IU‘.M \ it \\\ in i , i

Hiller wciuii! liirn neu. an via! ni Cx i r * \ta. !:*

remarked tu a I rcixli . ^ i]u<.ar vkc, " \Vc a ,

doors, so iiiua\ pos.iO'k vn; m - *

or \\hich du\uu.? :o adke ' ll.dea Ij^'Acvsi, 1* .

wanted iiexl, and laid -4'. U} ■ 'he dm: 0 .. l . ^

wais not iu he left wuiidcon: tor loa^

L H

419

CHAPTER NINE

HITLER’S WAR

1939

After the annexation of Austria, Hans Dieckhoff, one of the
senioi men m the German Foreign Office, remarked to Ribbentrop that
Bismarck would have taken years to consolidate his position before
making another move. “Then,” Ribbentrop retorted, “you have no
conception of the dynamics of National Socialism.”

The obvious weakness of Hitler’s policy, the fault which destroyed
him as surely as it had destroyed Napoleon, was his inability to stop.
By the end of 1938 Hitler had transformed Germany’s position m inter-
national affairs. He had everything to gam by waiting for a year or two
before taking another step, sitting back to profit from the divisions and
hesitations of the other European Powers, instead of driving them, by the
fears he aroused, mto reluctant combination. Moreover, a temporary
relaxation of the rearmament drive would have had considerable
economic benefits for Germany. But success had weakened the caution
which Hitler had shown in his first years of pov/er, strengthening his
native arrogance and making him contemptuous of opposition and
impetuous in the pursuit of his ambition.

A fortnight after the Munich Agreement was signed, on 14 October,
Goermg presided over a conference at which he demanded an accelera-
tion of the German rearmament programme. Some weeks later, at a
meeting of the Reich Defence Council on 18 November, attended by all
Reich Mmisiers and State Secretaries, as well as by the Commanders-in-
Chief and Chiefs of Staff, Goermg spoke for three hours on the need to
concentrate all the resources of the nation on raising the level of re-
armament from a current index of 100 to one of 300. Everything was to
be subordinated to this single task, regardless of the fact, which Goering
frankly admitted, that the German economy was aheady showing the
strain of the armament programme.

Alarmed at the financial consequences of Goermg’s new measures,
450

r t s 1 j " Vt 1 , ] s ' *

Scliatht, as PrcMdc’il tliL RrkiNn.u h pra o ' i ^ ^ n ^ ,
signed hy the Da* . I^ji^oiihc BanK pioL^' c -u Ci '^r 1.^,1:
reckless expciiiliuu lln. v..h on ' foiUd: ,1^^/ I! ' f ,

Schathi diuk n'^'leac! oi tii.4.usann ins men* ^rtad c , d I i ’n-,
dismisSiil “'^ou doe'’ Ui into dhs Nalioual SiKUui^* ris'ae., , f

hiiii ' AsPrc-idenl oi ihc Reiel>lurd^ Stliachl icplji-cd ' d- . ‘
Funk, and ail du. two ot Ike Bankd dnectics v*ere itnao.vd \ sCvn
decree \\as proiniilgaied .»hoi'^hsng he s^ollenj! i!n>n!'.iii^'n U
Bank and placing a undtn Ihe du.^wt 03 oi tif^i''' hue » s i ^ n lititoi
obligatiofi to prcnide tl.e CuncrnineSil \vhale*.er iivne, ii

demanded

I here no q e Bon aboin the puipo-e Ih.w rea^r unent ii w.h
to sirengihen Hitler’s h a.d in loaijn polks I ae dqualafion ol C /uili. ♦-
sknakia \uin ihe 1114 <it Hitler’s inn uahafe i»hkLlrte% hut ihh h} no
means occupied ,A\ his alienuon liie anncuiUon ol 1 :m anil tfie
destruction of the C/**chos!o\ak Sl te, as he had made ckai in die
conference of Noiemhei, FH7, ucteonK the prciimmanes to the iaidici
development o{ in^luruim pt>lic>

If any counir} had good reason tt» tea? (len mstjy’s snlttunn * u v^a>
Poland. At the Peace ScUiemcni o| pH.9, .^id atiervurds iiwfui tiiy
was weak, Ihe Pules had acipihed t.uutorv, the ius^» “1 wlikh wa» more
resented by ihe (icrmaiis than peihap^ any other pait ol die \ersdil!cs
Settlement, In order to powute Ih/.o d with acic-s to the »ea, Dan/ig
was sepaiated from Ciermany and made uiu* a hree ( wheie the
Poles enfoyed special privilege^, while I a^t Pru^^ia wa » di\ided Iron the
rest of the Retch by the Polish C orndci IIhUv on *ades.

Much of the land regained by Poland had been first sc /ed h> PriiH' la at
the lime of the Pailiiions, and was mfiahiiea In Ihkes. Bui the Foies,
especially in Silesia, had in turn tal en muic Ulo® tliev ciniLi Ie| iiimaicJy
cLiini. Gerniari go\cu laenls, lone before lli.dci, had contmiially
protested against Ific ujuaice of (jcHiiam/s casleni frontiefN, and
German puhlir opinion wa-^ a. solid in demanding that they should be
redraw'ii as Pi Iisii opinion was in letiiMn; it ihe rse i4 ilie Na/s to
power in Germany !uJ been lofas jd Sy the steady growth oi Na/i
miuence in Dan/ig, and it appeared only a question of lime betoic llie
city was reiiiiiied to the Reich

Yet the first coiiniiy with which Hitler had signed a Pact oi Non-
Aggiession had been Poland, and lot n\e yeais lie liealcd Poland in the
friendliest fashion, despite ihe iinpopukinly of such a polity ui (jciiiiaiiy.

’ Sth It ill It nhint AV A /« t/ p 4 1 , I 0*7

4 si

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

The obvious reason for Hitler’s attitude was his need to placate the most
suspicious of Germany’s neighbours and France’s principal ally h
Eastern Europe, until he was strong enough to risk her hostility with
equanimity. In this he enjoyed a brilliant success. But there is also some
evidence to show that, as Goermg believed, Hitler was anxious to secure
Polish support for his anti-Russian policy. With his Austrian outlook on
European pohtics Hitler did not share the traditional North German
dislike of the Poles, or the feeling of a common interest with Russia in
suppressing an independent Polish State, which had played so large a
part in shaping Prussian policy m the past. The Polish population of the
old Hapsburg Monarchy had never roused the same embittered national-
ism of the Austrian Pan-Germans as the Czechs. To an Austrian like
Hitler, the Poles, with their traditional hatred of the Russians, appeared
a natural ally against the common enemy of both the Poles and the old
Hapsburg Monarchy — Russia The essential condition, in Hitler’s view,
was the willingness of the Poles to accept the restoration of Danzig to
Germany and other changes in their western frontiers, in return for
which they would eventually find compensation eastwards against
Russia.

The question was whether the Polish Government would accept the
role of Germany’s ally m Hitler’s schemes of eastward expansion.
This question was the more difficult for the Poles to answer since their
own distrust of Russia virtually ruled out the logical alternative to
accepting Hitler’s offer, that of combining with Russia to present a solid
resistance to Germany’s ambitions. Polish policy aimed at independence
of both her great neighbours, but Poland’s strength was inadequate to
maintain such a position The tragic result was to leave Poland isolated,
and at the mercy of an agreement between Germany and Russia to
partition her territory between them.

Hitler adopted the policy of such an agreement with Russia, however,
only after the failure of his first plan, a German-Pohsh alliance against
Russia. Our information of these exchanges between Poland and
Germany is derived from The Polish White Book,^ and from the Second
German White Book.‘‘^ The matter was first broached shortly after
Munich, at a time when the Poles were anxious to secure a Hungarian
occupation of Ruthenia, and the consequent suppression of the
Ukrainian National movement which was causing trouble among their
own Ukrainian population. On 24 October, 1938, Ribbentrop invited

^ The Polish White Book Official Documents concerning Polish-German and Polish-
Soviet Relations, 1933-1939 (London, 1940)

"The full title is: Documents on the Events preceding the Outbteak of the War,
published by the German Foreign Office (American translation, N.Y., 1940).

452

! * f 5 ^ I** \ 1 » 1 '3 “ ' I

the Polish \nih ri%r!i*r, I. ,ef Lip-.V,: V) ] rrS^ ./ ‘ i‘r, • ! H / - ^

BerchlC'^^'iduii, asui. aPai I Jono;;,' tu ^l , . - ,:'a ‘ <■, ^ "m.i /. •.

legard to Rothen'i, a.!o.aa!> fo ?, ^ ,:j|, 'o-, :

Polish reladons void I! iC III iv i' oj, Hio ' ' ' »

declared, for a gcncia! nj:\ o; V\^ iswU'‘ o'- Cov ' " ' j

two countiic' . He oir. fooAajo rr ■ a!, ti.r PoLoUH . ’ la > i s,
ol which tlic f‘Ao nwvo son^r'cid acre :hr reP/’' I S’ a •

Danzig to ihe R eiL*', uffd < ac * .a.cProt ri«a: * . a, ^ , "n ex'' at icih * .a.l

road and r:iil\v;iy iic^o,, fh. F .h'sl^ ( i>i 'H r a ; !* --i Fko i,^: va'‘'

the rc^t of (iz^niny.

At inh sfiijc Rii'hcrdrop vas oa\1 UuIjC oo' x. * : hr oi.ard ^ ^ a!

Beck, tile F^fi^h Foreign Mmo'cw i ‘Co.j v: 'h < oi i%> lo g, . .s*,

siUirJion, and imuk a 'Oniihef ol aoLni'nd rr g m!* :o I indM la

reluni tor Pol>*h act|us..H‘e. ■. a in <Kn/oorFs ^ r , . i\ ' ! o pfr-

\iding PoLiiid wHh a ficc goO lo f), /* ilmow’'' r a /h a F t HPi

territi^nal ruad and rasow*}. Ch’{Uaa> '.uoM fx* piag.ip ! c'Cciai l!ie
Gcrintin Pofp,h Paci and ! ' 'Oi oxuneo l 1 iOefo' > n o^? P. r

The PoIinIi ^aVoiiiF cunPna^ »vxotiirty,‘f '.y.t ' 'C‘ 1 H '* 1 » c I A L Ihv ^ icri* I I
took caic to oioii when they y-'dofsh d liic r Wane IX'okd
As a possible spiieie for tuane e4<-Apc, .M«na i.,\a ■ , iiv i o t.) . anee iS
German Foreign Msnoler ow'cabed r^a- u’O-aa 'P s , a .SiOe a J ^ t
emigration (4 Jews tiosn I\n,p S, uhu 4/ r-r;/ p:S/, } o* i, i i!n, ^
htiM.s of ikr of /Wan ,.*!!' ii-’Scd 'h.o, a 'P ‘ jMi ^ if

ment ag.ccd lo the Cieo .un coiucpla * icwi D> i

Road, the question oi Rudicma aaJd Oc .ci'^cJ 1 1 cccoa! a. ^ wan FfS.asn'‘
attitude lo the m.a.'c!.

There was moJuiig p-^v oi ihs*, ^u; ; pi,- - 4^*, i \^*\i,iu Ci'

operation against Russia, a liad !?cen ina a - U' iioeo;:/

in the past fixe \eirs So Fr the inutatua.i ISiO b*. p ax ule i ’p\ ITFk,
and Hiller had not been prC' o*/ fFjc the oio, , a bop •' ikm/ig pat
the whole iiiaUer in a dilfctci i ^ . iTs 1 kd.>'^ n lo i.iiwki, al ih:

tune the iicy-nta lops b^jiig c ^ndiv Wai ijc original Cierman
Pufisb Agreeiiicni i4 Jaamary, H)3 k Mnsisal ih'oaddvi liadi Lod donii
the axioni Chat [Jaai/y; w . the muvs-' eo a on (rennanG iLteidiop .
towards Poland. I or Ihr last Uroe {\w queslion ol DiiP/p* has! beep
raised between the two gn\ennpe"s% and Heck could !ii\c Iiois dimht
that Rihbciiiu)|Ts piopo' Js ^vcic 1 erne naulc with a scfocid nninciiusc^
which had been lacking (foerin capaarc't ‘ eesp^ic^.

The success iT Beck' . i\ hey , I' ladepeniaen.o hail so ^ a lesicd c>ii lb '

* \i the taao of it. prlJiv a • a /i i v‘ { aoi .is > h e. • I'c , J luvfi IWvt \
Rusm i, isptipon?"*’', V K,r <

" FoIlsH U iiiiv /jX’oA, |s.;,%,s 4 -a ‘ Culht^J iSjuws I

453

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

fact that neither Germany nor the Soviet Union had wished to bring
pressure to bear on the Poles; it was now to be subjected to its first real
test. Hitler had limited his demands in the first place to Danzig and a
road and railway across the Corridor, but not a single Pole believed that,
once these had been conceded, Hitler would not demand the cession of
the provinces of Posen and Polish Silesia. Nor did Beck consider
Ribbentrop’s vague offer of alliance against Russia at all seriously,
since he saw quite correctly that it would reduce Poland to the subor-
dinate status of a German satellite. On the other hand, although he did
his best to renew such links as he had with Moscow — a joint statement
of Russo-Polish friendship was issued on 26 November and trade talks
begun — he was equally opposed to becoming too dependent upon
Russia either. The most he could do was to try to persuade the Germans
not to press their demands, at the same time making it clear to them that
any attempt to annex Danzig by force would lead to war.

A further conversation between Ribbentrop and Lipski took place
on 19 November, and v/as followed by the visit of Beck to Berchtesgaden
for talks with Hitler and his Foreign Minister at the beginning of
January. At the end of January Ribbentrop went to Warsaw. In the
course of these conversations, which were still conducted m a friendly
atmosphere, the position of both sides was more clearly defined. Hitler
declaied that a strong Poland was an absolute necessity for Germany.
“Every Polish division engaged against Russia was a corresponding
saving of a German division But “Danzig was German, would always
remain German, and sooner or later would return to Germany.”^ In
return for Danzig and the grant of extra-territorial communications
with East Prussia, Hitler was prepared to offer the fullest safeguards
for Poland’s economic interests m the city, and a German guarantee of
Poland’s frontiers.

However carefully wrapped up, Beck’s reply was a blank refusal. He
was willing to discuss a German-Polish agreement about Danzig to
replace the existing League of Nations regime, but not to consider the
return of Danzig to the Reich He was prepared to improve German
communications with East Prussia, but not to agree to an extra-
territorial road across the Corridor Ribbentrop’s persistence entirely
failed to alter Beck’s attitude. The Polish Foreign Minister protested,
With some reason, that on both issues Polish opinion was too strong to
allow him to give any other reply, even if he had wished to.

^ Beck’s Minute of his conversation with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, 5 January, 1939
Polish White Book, No. 48

^ Schmidt’s Minute of the same conversation, Second German White Book,
No. 200.

454

h! n i , I

It was arJskel^ that Ih^Ur 'v^a ^ 1 - 'A i]i ^i!u ' ?r. ii**
iiidcfiniielw On 24 Vo^cmheu after wv . - ;'r i . -‘r

with Lipski, he itWHcd !ps seacl Du.tir.e ^ j \ : ai I . A
provide Uh a iarihei eoi' a iwlcv : a iiditnsrj Oi. w i n* ill,'
German fnr which pin? acic to he submitted h} *' -i >

Altlioiigh I'jc new iindinm i>f this, alier hs^ cor.vcr Kit.im . a, o
gaden Beck told Rihittu.lrt'O ih it he was m a r.ifstic in mih “ P
ticiiliiiy in repard to the Oan/ij v ^ ti ‘U, as it had been t la^ed d *
Chancelkir, he s.aw no po^^vh-lity uhale\cT ol a ■, nei Ikil, lor tea
moment, it sailci! Ili'Li jun fw prcvs his den'ua!^ on Pihiud, He had
first to conodetc the hqiijJatuvn hJ ( 1 ku. \t ILtOiPo idei

he assured Bee’ Ihai to tc \Vi uhi K‘ .a* l ui t ■’ d ir fX ' /*>' o <
in his speech cU 3 i I inuarv he n aua h« ♦ n t: odercr-'ce fa

Poland and the fne-sear- »J (icoam l\ li !i Xm^eunua \i:vi t^.;,
there was Mlence nu the nev^ c\ei: \.eek«*

Then came the Ovcup.iiion of Boheus a-Mui.oia. and i';i (jeriisa
assumption of a [Uaiiviorale o\e" Ska d/e \ oriwe : o iliou Has

transformed, Aiilituii^’h the HfUija/aa ouiipiihm ol Radie i i remiAw^d
Polish anxiCiics about the I kiaruan \aaoual mo\inejp, (icrinat.
garrisons in Sk)\akia on the soaihens Hank 4>* Ih nnd itherc v%rc
already German troops on Pulandb iioithern and wesicrn fionPcro
were taken in Warsaw as a step cvpict'K diTv\‘ed agaunl PhIj a
security. The delibciate Ui^eiect td the (lenuans to lalonn them of wluil
they were doing increased the Polish Citnernmenf * esora
Nor was tins the ciii! o\ the ^arpnves (iern.aiiy baii in ^ao’e foi
Poland. Immediately after the iKcapeCdor oi Pra .e Ribhen 'op pre-
sented an iiUimalurn to the Luluiankiu (^o\ernmem deiiiardin'; the
return of the Memclkind, a ^top of terntorv on tiie nur.nen; tronuci
of East Piiissij winch Germany luid Km by tlie Iicaly oi VersailLw
No country was more mtcieAcil than Poland m any change in tUe
siestas qua along the Balia* coa^u yet R!hbeiiln>p agari refused to gi\e
any information m adsaric lo the Polish \mhassador.

There was no qiicsuuii of I itlwaman renC.ancc tes Germany, and a
week after lev tewing his tioi^ps lu Prague Hitiei iirnscd in \lenid by
sea to acdaini the reiurn of ihe city to ilie Reich. '‘'Wm have reiuniedd'
he told the Memellanders, *“lo a nuglity new Cieimany ... a Germany
determined lo he llit n^^Oes. ot her own destiny and liersdf fashion
that destiny, e\en if that shoiikl not please the woild wiiliout. For this
new Gcriiiiiny today o\er eighty niilhon Germans take iheir AaiRG'

^N.n CAT PoiisH Uht.i it a, 4¥

^Speevh at Mcind, ?1 March, laVq Hd\ik‘^ sU II, paais 1/ 'S-U

45s

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

For tlie moment the focus of Western anxieties was Rumania, where
Herr Wohlthat was engaged in negotiating a far-reaching economic
agreement on behalf of the Reich. On 17 March the Rumanian Minister
in London, M. Tilea, saw Lord Halifax and spoke in alarming terms of a
German ultimatum and the possibility of a German invasion of his
country. Whether M. Tilea’s information was accurate or not, his action
was swiftly repudiated by the Rumanian Government, which, on
23 March, proceeded to sign the Agreement with Germany without
further demur. Since the Treaty estabhshed a dominant position for
Germany in the development of Rumania’s very considerable agricul-
tural and mineral resources, it appeared unlikely that Hitler would make
a further move m that direction. The Hungarians, whose eagerness to
recover Transylvania had been encouraged by the Germans as an addi-
tional way of squeezing the Rumanians, were abruptly reined back, and
an uneasy peace descended on the Balkans.

For it was on Poland that Hitler’s attention was now fixed, and even
before the annexation of Memel and the signing of the Treaty with
Rumania the Germans had renewed their proposals in a peremptory
tone. On 21 March Ribbentrop again asked the Polish Ambassador to
call on him. The interview seems to have been conducted with some
acerbity on both sides. Lipski complained of the German action in
Slovakia, which had been undertaken without a word to the Poles.
Ribbentrop replied that, if the matter of Danzig and the extra-
territorial road and railway to East Prussia could be settled to Ger-
many’s satisiaciion, the Slovak question could doubtless be dealt with
111 such a way as to remove Polish anxieties. But a settlement of the
issues between Germany and Poland could no longer be delayed. The
Fuehrer had been disagreeably surprised at the failure of the Poles to
make any constructive reply to his proposals, and it was important that
he should not come to the conclusion that Poland was rejecting his offer.
For that reason it would be advisable for Colonel Beck to come to
Berlin as soon as possible, and for the Ambassador to report to Warsaw
at once.

The terms of the German offer remained the same, and Lipski
records that Ribbentrop ‘'emphasized that obviously an understanding
between us would have to include explicit anti-Soviet tendencies. . .
Hitler was now determined to press the Poles hard, but he was still
thinking in terms of a peaceful settlement which would bind the Poles
more closely to Germany. This is confirmed by the record of a talk

^Polish White Book^ No 61. Txhe German account of the meeting, which omits
any mention of Russia, is given in the Second German White Book, No. 203.

456

Ill n i ’ If

which llithr had ^ith the
von Brauchiisdi. 1'5 Mai^n

Ifie f litliai fB . av^-’ <.!i « * h d < i
by the ibe uf fuiee. lie Hnl j *r

Bf itaai by d*ar’t^ hi. « . .

For thi b^r ?.« I a.
question, L -.h aid nuw ^ ^ f . i
would iitoc to K" Kh^-I on t\. ' ^

In 111 a C.I‘C Bdaau I “e a . .. 'Hi
taken iiHo aLeotru a j’ u a f^H-s I >1
has iq in nd j u \ u s< lia - a -v i , "
Last Piasaa lo die ea^tcu " p n t m'’
ment a^c l|lic^bce^^ Li dt ^cn\ > I

the I .kiii i s. Ib )!j on, , • ? Jd ^ . .
questions aLo iLniain oporj

f '

-- i

)

1 S»

riw* ' \

I i ! p, ^

♦ * • f p
» w H

I I

i» ^ t

Braiichitschd nt‘'‘s alicad n\ \i\ \f i \ d , • a ’

lime, ininicdijlclv ,‘uu Piu’ i ’ M a l> f * ^ h

priihlcm to K be h iil\ ’\it jf ’h ,t fS L h h * ^ e

had aK\ii\s uitei Jed \m h d Sad ^ i . » h v • » ' t » j

~™to use Dar/ig as puicsMi* M *. s ' P b s * Ha

woiiid lia\e been akidcH nijh h . /( * d.. i ^ h '

of the pole-* Oh the other ha: il h^ wa : h ^ .a w J' ah I

for the Ihiles, and, il hi ha! to < 0\'f ^ L uvd'wuMi /ud

impose a rcal!) dfaslic nnileracM. 4] . ^ ’u

had read) at the haik ul 1 . ”4”^ I c’Uh ^ ds, v 'deo ipoqika ^ ;
the Poles ga\c !iim in liie am* v-s davs.

On Siiiida}, 2b kh iih, I ipd ?, ’It V ’ iui^dn

Rlbhcn^r^'p tf/e ihdidi nf^ls i i p' ^ - 1 iH, df \f

The Folisii Cioscrraiii t l ea. d tf' u u Id '”/r a av ' t.

Geiinan conie i!"!iOh » i I hiPii. , * ^.oa,. xam. o tv ’ i
setticmeiu u till Cic« man) Hh ' mShOhiih . ih!"' j ’ h ■ *10

of Dan/ig and the ciOi Merr^ ^end h ad aiid kuousv ^ a a tbu

and were onec again lejod n Riia^eH t'O i.Mueu ! udi ^oddi) afrd
bcgdii to Ihicatiii the P d- , J o^^ci. u uihO r Hon mea. .rc%
'Tt rermiidcd him o! ceuam rok\ ih e*; r tiicr Slade tob

\ ions!)/ he w as tt*i rd 1 /^.« hod.o\aK[,J ik,.aklea daii aJ ag^.ieS'^iiii'*

^ NJ> R 100.

L H P’

457

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

our part (against Danzig) would be an aggression against the
ch.’ll

'he next day Ribbentrop summoned Lipski for a further interview,

I him the Polish counter-proposals were wholly unsatisfactory,
,an blustering about Polish outrages against the German minority in
and and warned him that the German Press could hardly be re-
lined much longer from answering Polish attacks. On 28 March
:k sent for the German Ambassador m Warsaw and replied to
}bentrop’s statement on Polish aggression against Danzig with the
loiincement that the Polish Government would equally regard any
snip! by the Germans, or by the Danzig Senate, to change the status
) m the Free City as an act of aggression against Poland.

The German Ambassador: You want to negotiate at the point of
i bayonet!

■‘Colonel Beck: That is your own method.”-^

So far the exchanges between Germany and Poland had followed a
iirse which, if not that desired by Hitler, had certainly been foreseen
him. The next stage, foreshadowed by Ribbentrop’s threatening tone
26 and 27 March, was to be the apphcation of pressure to the recal-
rant Poles. At this stage, however, the situation was complicated by
i unexpected intervention of the British Government, which, to Hitler’s
ger, refused to mind its own business and disinterest itself in what was
ppenmg in Eastern Europe. Alarming reports were reaching London
German preparations for immediate action against Danzig and
)land. This time British intervention did not take the form it had taken
September, 1938, of offering to secure satisfaction for Germany’s
mands with the object of avoiding war. This time it was an open and
lambiguous warning which Mr. Chamberlain conveyed, and the
-termination of Great Britain to risk war rather than acquiesce m
rther German acts of aggression was plainly stated. On 31 March the
itish Prime Minister announced m the House of Commons: “In the
ent of any action which clearly threatens Polish independence, and
inch the Polish Government accordingly consider it vital to resist with
eir national forces, H.M. Government would feel themselves bound
once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power.”
tie French Government associated themselves with the British m these
isurances.

Mr. Chamberlain’s sudden decision to offer an unconditional
larantee to Poland, followed within a fortnight by similar guarantees

458

^ Lipsii’s Report to Beck, Polish Whre Book, No. 63.
^ Polish White Book, No 64,

HUJ Kf \P. I V ’ I

to Rumania aral Ci was tritiLi/i i m t * t r f ‘ a na *51 '

has continued lo Ik cuiki/ew ance, a a r 1.1^ wiO'm . u • ‘ /.* a
the threat ol furihi’ (Kmuin ^ ^ if li i , \ k ; ;

does not allei the fact that, iioni lLlk‘r% p 1 w* ' . ! * - * < •'

fronted with a new Htuatson. priiunpili} a.:
to overrun the reirkimdcr iit Ovtiiu-' ^va*/i ol*} av i / ‘ a' v'” ’ ■
Munich Agreement The ctieet of hw aaton had pna eO r di; .<'A-
edged. For li it strengthened G,TmaJ>}\ t'nir' irv n io >‘1 ^.na jd H\ct!
him to exert increased pressure on the Pole-, i; aUi .0 la t

awaken the British Cnuerrinient io i^e ^aed n ^ JJ ^ I tl o-.
demands if Europe was not to l^e t<‘nqueakl pkxen 1 1 I Ja‘ ar ' iIkc
taken b} the British WiSs uahkef. U) sti^pat * , h aco

explicitly described by C'hamheilaia .0 tenifk laiv a * Ut 1 : dv'
the position until moie iar-aMs^^mg ajaknieni. 1 ! * tufe ea ir to
In short, Hitler had now to kwe the possihihi} he !. id ' a "tkw .\!>i
in avoiding, of a buri'»pein coahtiun ^'hiih w- aid fvii an end to
tactics of “one-by-une^' and threaten him witn u e ju! \u it Le
venturedunany rurthcj ad\entureonfi>**cienpt»lu ^ I heintcyesi ‘ I k‘ rfcxl
five months, April to Sepleniher, Pi vi, hesin I lit ler'satlcrapP U < iln iJellit'
forces ranging theniselves ag<iinsi him, and to ux.ocr that Ifcahmi ot
action which he had enfoyed belv\cen Mireh, aini Marsh, Pidi

Hitler was both surprised and angered by the Bikidi C iovctn!iiC!n\
declaration Admiral Canaris, who wa^ with Hiller s nin aUer I La news
came from London, leporleu that he dew into a pa^sioii, luminered oa
the table-top lod stormed up and dwwa tl:e mhhu ''ill stn-k thini a sfrw
that theyll choke oiif’ he snoutedd When he ike at Wiliidu.siiaseii ^ n
1 April, the day after Chan’be?lain\ annoanesmem in die House, he
insisted excitedly that he was m?l • ^ he turned tr un ll\ path he liad
chosen, Germany could not subm t to inUinKibuin or cikirdcmcal

Wlienlolk inoihei count ncs say that now lK\ ircammo^ aid dial fhew w -i
continuously inciease then ainiamenK, then to these Oai/ men I Iloc oiA
one thing to say . *'Me you will newei tire," I am dclciimntd to l eu nut to
march on tins path, I am coioaiced thit we shot ad\ia.LC titstei than n«t„
others. , . . If anyone should icalh wish to pit his siiergtii aeaaist oais wtlh
violence, then the (iciman people is in the poaiion to a^sept the ch dic.ev
ai any time: it is ready, too, and lesolstd. , . a

In the same mood Huler issued a new ducctisc ti> hw commanders
on 3 April which listed as the three contingencies tiu whkh they were

^ Canaris's account is aptaicd b» li B tijscviu. in 'L im'K, i nd lioiiuui
1948), page 362

“Baynes sol 11, pages I 5‘)0-!d>02.

45n

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

to prepare, the defence of the frontiers. Operation White (war with
Poland), and the seizure of Danzig. Plans for Operation White, the aim
of which was set as the smashing of the Polish armed forces, were to be
ready by 1 September, 1939, the actual date of the German invasion of
Poland, German policy, the directive stated, continued to be based on
the avoidance of trouble with Poland. But “should Poland reverse her
policy towards Germany and adopt a threatening attitude towards the
Reich, we may be driven to a final settlement, notwithstanding the
existing Pact with Poland.”^ For the moment, however, Hitler seems to
have been at a loss how to proceed. This time the British Prime Minister
showed no disposition to fly to Germany, and the Polish Foreign
Minister, instead of coming to Berlin as Ribbentrop had demanded,
visited London, where agreement was announced on the preparation
of a pact of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland.
Remarking on the signs of hesitation in Berlin, the French Charg6
d’ Affaires reported to Paris on 11 April:

For the first time the Third Reich has come up against a categorical no; for
the first time a country has clearly expressed its determination to oppose
force by force, and to reply to any unilateral movement with rifles and guns.
This IS the kind of language that is understood in Germany. But they have
not been used to hearing it for a long time. It has also been difficult for them
to believe their ears, and they still do not despair of wearing down Polish
resistance m the long run.^

Gregoire Gafencu, the Rumanian Foreign Minister, who paid a visit
to the Chancellery about this time (on 19 April, the eve of Hitler’s
fiftieth birthday), found him determined but calm on the subject of
Poland. It was the mention of England which brought him out of his
chair, pacing up and down the room and shouting out his resentment.
Why, he demanded, were the British so obstinate that they could not
see he wanted to arrive at an agreement with them? “Well, if England
wants war, she can have it. It will not be an easy war, as they like to
think, nor a war fought m the way the last one was. England will not
have the whole world on her side; this time, half at least will be on our
side. And it will be a war of such destructiveness as no one has imagined.
How can the English imagine what a modern war will be like when they
are incapable of putting two fully-equipped divisions in the field ?”^
Some of the anger which Hitler felt at this check came out in his
speech to the Reichstag at the end of the month. On 14 April, following
the Italian invasion of Albania on the 7th, President Roosevelt had

1 N D. C-120.

M, de Vaiix St Cyr to M. Bonnet, 11 April, 1939; French Yellow Book, No. 97.

^ Gregoire Gafencu Dernieis Jours de V Europe (Pans, 1946), page 89.

460

til ii ' V. ^ *

addressed a miv.sgc h) Mies'daa /rJ 11?; .< ' ' ’ -"^'c ':’. ?•

to five assuraiKCs aininisi a/i’re *, e ; t •’ c.' .

It was announced in Ik rliRlhai IL:ive " Hid' ;■ , n'k.’i*:/ i' . ‘'S'
28 ApiiL

Hitler hcfaii his speed) wrh a k'? Mn-l ei dw iw' wee >

foreign policy, up to th? picscid, L w v’- > 0 ,^' f fwko.e e.

speeches on foreign policy as u* < c p, j,.
always beginning with t!,e in.nuaKw d’c w . .v - \c i ,, 'oo
psychologicalK neccssan, in o d.. v. d'w: e d.; i 1 s,’' 0 . :. aid t^"ir

viction With which he CfS's! d/i'.pj ihe , M' . e’ .ir-t < ■- .r s

Ad'tcr descnhing )*is acOo i n, (‘/lw, * ij m , r ^ ^ p^* > .

Hitler paved to a Cinns.JefaW«’a of t' s "isi-? t; . r ,‘ ^ u'eal

Britain and with IMaral ! (^cp Br/ oi L h,, i , ■* a, ’ ; , !'\sr ;:o
of fnendsliip and admiration, ]' t Inccd'' tpco/ifhad} '•i:ro\'‘fi il v- r
placed upon the !v*sjs of mnoal wcawi lor ci.a Mthw“ 'aw > s iiio
achicvemenks. This fhc BwW,d^ nWc' ol 'o ;c ' iar B.Pm'i fi'''''
accepted war willi (lennany ;w nww aak,.: uud ij,\ i‘vg tl c" old is one
of ciKircling Cicniiany. With d'w loe k* a to: o ; \i 'Sr uwwrwf;
Na\al Treaty iif 1935 h ;d beta Cwcnncd. and he I aJ tlunchcr oa aS*w
to make a haiiial dennnciafioa rJ 10 ,

With Poland, too, llider dctlarcJ,

lie

had

IX'C

St Uf

00 ,

no >inh Iw

reach a sctilcment. Po!.w and <mnw 0

A',

kid lo iiv

0 a !

‘ h]

* »e

\ w bs liter

they liked it or nut, and lie had ’ e,ei

css

•Al !

■ s a

p ! . . a

; 'h

. s‘ ' .!’i iri

Poland to ha\c acew^s lo iLc Ha!

G, ,

ii r

c* ao

f ''

*1 . 1

demanus, i'ur access to i a Prii>s;a ,

iTlC

Hu'

^ he

" e < 0 i

fi ■;

'! i'l

»’ i iV’ IW5 'i

city of Dan/ig to the Ri'i ' , lo

- gu-

k j K S

ok/

l!i

! 1

J isu'dc an

unprecedented oOlr to fa lu’ui, the !

an r

■ S tl 1

1 ed

^ ; i

1 e

' rpiwl wh

with the carefui ormsaor, ds* (sc

;

m *\

W li

! '

|rn

ri a Moe

directed against Rusda. li»e Pojc^, L

VF ,

? ,

? f

' !

l\ I

e( 'Wed his

iiOer, but luid bq sin to lend IImw A\k

hke

'he

^ / V i

.ae 2

ct. Is Jr re

—to the iiilernalional caunws'f. ,c

1 ■

1 (u

JO,

. ’iS

!l> ih'. ’/

circumstances the GcnmawPoii d\ A'^s

iCi 1

S, ’i

PW4;

: ■ •

'Ou XI CVS

validity, and Hiller had ilierelore d.c

was

I Ir '

' Irn

UJ lv<l

. ihw 0

m He was

careful lo add, however, ihal me m'

\ C"

lo a

‘sh a*.

nes

,’! UvU

il bc'Wwca

Germany and Poland aas soil rpen.

ari'

« ^ '

■l !'

C Hi>!

a!d

wcl

come such

an agreement, pro\idcJ it v w apon iopni
Tliroiiglicnil lids speech liiiie^ '.poke ni w'. 4,,/. t'Wits the ‘Irfer
national warmongeis’' in the fXmiocracr , whrsc >hic aim was !r
misrepresent Cscrni^dn aims and tu sin uy lAi.ddc He IwviWcd of dw
part German and Italian forces Iiad picked m f raaco's victory, an 1

4f)I

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

exalted the strength of the Axis, congratulating Mussohni on the occupa-
tion of Albania and the estabhshment of order in a territory which
naturally belonged to Italy’s Lebensraum.

Hitler had by now worked himself into the state of mind in which
he was prepared to give President Roosevelt his answer. The second half
of his speech was marked by a display of sarcasm which produced roars
of applause from the Reichstag, and from the delighted Goering, who
presided. It is not difficult to pull holes in Hitler’s argument when it is
set down in cold print, or to point to the cheapness of his retorts, but to
see and hear it brought to hfe on the film is to be struck once again by
Hitler’s mastery of irony and every other trick of the orator. As he de-
livered it, and as Germany heard it over the radio, it was a masterpiece
of political propaganda, directed with equal skill at his German audience
and at public opinion in the U.S A.

The American President had read him a lesson on the wickedness and
futility of war: who should know better, Hitler retorted, than the
German people, who had suffered from the oppression of an unjust
peace treaty for twenty years? Mr. Roosevelt believed that all problems
could be solved round the conference table: yet the first nation to express
distrust of the League of Nations was the U.S A., which refused to join
it from the beginning. “The freedom of North America was not achieved
at the conference table, any more than the conflict between the North
and South ” Mr Roosevelt’s view, though it did him credit, found
no support in the history of his own country, or of the rest of the
world.

President Roosevelt pleaded for disarmament: the German people,
trusting m the promises of another American President, had laid down
their arms once before, only to be shamelessly treated by their enemies
in the Peace Conference that followed. Germany was the one nation
that had disarmed, only to see the other States repudiate their promises:
the German people had had enough of unilateral disarmament.

Mr. Roosevelt was much concerned about German intentions m
Europe. If Germany enquired about American policy in Central and
South America she would be referred to the Monroe Doctrine and told
to mind her own business. None the less, Hitler had approached each of
the States mentioned by the President and had asked them if they felt
threatened by Germany, and if they had asked the American President to
leqiiest guarantees on their behalf. The reply in all cases had been
negative. Not all the States mentioned by the President, however, had
been able to reply. In Syria and Palestine the views of the inhabitants
could not be ascertained owing to the occupation by French and British
462

Ul i f

—not Gcrmm— troop''. The Oe^nt^n (nucj i'jv h ’ • / . ^ ^ »
give assurances against agijre ^lon .0 of i^'.c n 1 ,s % * .c i to Iv
the President, provided ^m\y that thc> t fisu* : >1 a. rJ av , Lsl :*r j h
assurances themscKes.

Mr. Roo*>evLid I IliII^ undci-Uind tlut i'k i in*. ^ ^ i j* - . !;'y.

anmense wealth ofyoui c'jiinn> a!lia\ ^ i«i . di, ts

of the uhole wodd and for «hc In rt ati naO, n . I , un^' p, i ^ *
much smallei and. more modcOt :e.

I once took incr a Sla .% v V cu v,u^ tacvd I \ p ^ ^ A ^ V

trust in the proiiii^^es of the icd of ihe \\«n hi \!h! 1 * ' iil ^ ; t
cratic go\e»nments. . . .

Since then, VIr. Ro(»sc\ ell, I ii nc onh heo ' d'U*. ' ' 0/ ‘

I cannot feel m\veh' responsible Im' hr fat ^ of dsc ' u a . / ^ t J U *4

no interest in the pitiful tale ol rro 4i»\n p^Mpl i h c . * 1 a*,. ! » iJ
called upon b> Pro\idcu<wO t > ^ m\ o\, 1 pio nc m o e. . . . I fi !\. liud
day and night foi the single task ot iv^akLiimy Ihc po w " * ■! |v tpie
view of our desertion b> the lest of the vt )s lu. , . .

I have conquered chaos in (.ciau'v ,e-.wt mi h.i Mdei in '‘u ,

increased pioduction. ... I fuwe aieect-u. u m lirtli ’ ’m hd 'm o*- 1 . ni sc

foi the whole of s^.\en mdi.op uncinn’o>et!. . . Nm on* - i c 1
German people politicails, but I lu.ve .d osc-unv d tu an. 1 1'
oured to aestroy sheet by sfuei tlie treats \diwh m * 1 * ^ w m loavun
the vilest oppression which peoples and Urn 1 at ®xji is how iic: iveu c* -
peeled to put up with.

I have brought hack to the Re.ch pun? ..ws lUvea tu^vi us ' 1 1 d h I
have led back to their natne counli> mdhofis « 1 ueinia is wiic* ic loni
away fiom us and were m misc'S, I !iu»e ic-estahi dif tl dn hisU i ufiitv 4d
German living-space - and. Mi. Roosesclt, I luue CiideiuKUCd to .ifiaai ail
this without spilling blood and without hnngina tu my pc- 4 ul coa
sequentiy to others, the of war,

1, who twent>-onc sears ago was aa unknown swuk-, di d sukiic of nn
people, have attained i!u ^ Mr. sev«»lt, la nw own ci emw . . . \ iUi. Mo
Roosevelt, have a much easici uwk in umnpanvu,. \oa Ik*c tme PiaadtiU
of the United States m 191 1 when 1 bcc imc < h i ‘u hi^r ul i 1 * Risdu I loni
the very outset you steppcii to the head ol uae ot the I iiocW and Hcaltlue t
States in the world. . . . You have at i (Hu disposal the ni Ui^Lni ao nrnciai
resources in the wodd. ... In pue ot the I wt tnat tlie popala ion of 3011
IBunlry is scarcely one-ihird cieatei thar^ the lumhe: ol inhahiLtau in
Greater Geimanv, >011 possess nime than hiteen times is much h\ ina-spatc
Conditions prcwi.iing in youi C4mnri> aic on uch a lai vc ■ calc that sou can
find time and leisuie to give votii aMcntion to umveisal piobicms.

Youi concerns and suttgeaiuns, tiicicfoic, u ua a much laiivr are.i tliaii
mine, because my world. Mi, Rooseveh, in whicii Priwidentc lia » placed me
and for which 1 am theiefoie obliged to WiiiL, w iihtoiUiiiaieK miidi

461

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

smaller — althougii for me it is more precious than anything else, for it is
limited to my people.

I believe, however, that this is the way m which I can be of the most service
to that for which we are all concerned, the justice, well-being, progress and
peace of the whole human community.^

This speech of 28 April, 1939, is one of the most effective defences
Hitler ever made of Ins use of the power he had secured in 1933. Nor
does it require much imagination to see how powerfully the argument
of Hitler’s closing passage must have appealed to the German people.
Yet Hitler’s real skill lay in his evasion of the simple question which
President Roosevelt had posed: was Nazi Germany entertaining further
schemes of aggression?

To this question Hitler, for obvious reasons, preferred to give no
clear answer. Instead, he confused the issue by repeating his own highly
selected and exaggerated account of the history of Germany since 1918,
by pointing to the inconsistencies and shortcomings of his critics, and
by playing upon that historical panah-complex of self-pity and self-
justification which the German people had developed after the defeat
of 1918 Even to question his intentions was made to appear as part of
that denial of equal rights to the German people upon which he had fed
his own and his audiences’ indignation for so long.

From the point of view of the immediate situation the speech marked
the close, rather than the opening, of a period of activity on Hitler’s
part. Having answered Polish obduracy and the British guarantees by
the denuriciation of the Naval Treaty and the German-Poiish Pact,
Hitler was content to sit back and wait. Even in regard to Poland the
door had been left open to further negotiations, if the Poles should
change their minds.

Tins attiiude was not changed after Beck’s reply to Hitler in his
speech to the Polish Diet on 5 May Rejecting Hiller’s account of the
negotiations between Poland and Germany and reaffirming Poland’s
determination not to agree to the German demands. Beck spoke of
“various other hints made by representatives of the Reich Government
which extended much fuilher than the subjects of discussion. I reserve
the right to return to this matter if necessary.”- This covert reference to
suggestions of a joint German-Polish front against Russia, and Beck’s
declaration that peace could be bought too dearly, if it was at the price
of national honour, did not, however, stir Hitler to reply. The German

^ Full text in Documents on Intet national Afaus, 1939-1946 (London, 1951), vol. I,
Maicli-Scpicmbei, F^39, pages 214-56
“ Polish White Book, No 77, Report of Beck’s Speech.

464

fflllIR's WAR, 19.^1

Press, too, was kepi iiaider lestrair.t IL'p^riinj P'T, vi Mas,

the FrcDch Aiiibasiiadur in Berlin svroic:

As far as the aclua! suO'^laacc nf ihc i » ^

remauiin their iC'pecos a p»K ,H)ii .C) 'a ? < i "v^

iomakeagcstuua Actav!f 3 ,o!Uh‘liw'‘i’w>' a. i'\v p : ' P ’

will soon glow ta*ed uf hci 'IwMiaP* jUrud.u, , * ^ > i;' e.: A*../ !*.

and mot all} , and that slie v,-' i . g sen to ihuki dM kJ ii ^ i . IS*
that nobod}/ 5% an\!(.u*. lu hgla lii- the i.in

a European \sar" -thisscernuuncfh.uadi-psra e him f.a ps pipni

Throughout the summer of !9'h;, fn*m Ihe e \d i . \p' X'p'hU
Hitler was little to be seen in public, made no mipuit^oii p*un sa ternci u
and only came infreqiRniK to Bcrl.n. Mou <>: m/ tmie ***} peiu u
Bcrchlesgciden. His bileuco was as mueli (be pand u ai ici laim) * » ni‘
calculation. Yet he could ha\c uc'vised nt.beiui tm iucouiao m.

The measures hastily improvi'^ed b) the ( .*.;nJKali a !iad

been due to the sense of urgency created by a^.t a m C'/e^ho Juvaku*
and the Memelland Once Uie lens* m w..'. di: ..or ^ a»! i*nn

pulsion disappeaicd, and there wa^ a goad /’umcv dial Loud, n and
Pans might be templed to reduce rather loan eOeiai tm* iiuub they
had assumed, in Pans, in partivular, the ciuient^ oi ^pp 4* 4Cl*IC*i.( ilf'ili
defeatism still ran stnmgly beneath the s irfasv. \m weie me u j* - ij>tre-
which had been given to Poland and to Riaikima of saluc. * me die>
could be supported by the coristiucinui of a coh^oM s} ,uiu ‘♦I'cHlla*
live secarity. The piilicy of appeascinrnl hitliaUo h ho*^Al Ik il'c
Western Powers made it dilTicuil lor them to civOc sLcn a a V^cin in a
short lime.

The key to their success lay m Mo.wsrA, ,ki 1. the Kicking of
Russia could collective securif} m ^ asicrn L.r-*pe he madie ?: In ' am
thing more than a pjra'.e. Not uni} hoaevei. did the RiiS‘Jan C louaii-
menl look upon BntKh and i leiivh poisc} us‘h nilenvc dKini a, bat the
Poles, the Rumamans and Ihc peopks iil the B due Skcak ncic
averse to accepliOi bxlp funn a t*'anU> dag icjardcd* ^udi rnucli
suspicion as Gcriiictny. (ju.cn tm * and i leluxaHo:! of psc'-suic, hem* was
a situation fioiri wlhoh Hilkr >biuaki uol fiml it hard u* iku ict profit.
'‘During the next four moinhsd'' wrote Sir NckIc ILnidcfson, ‘Uhc chief
impression which I had of HuLt was that of a mailer ches^qdaxer

^ M. Couloiidrc to M bonnet, 9 Ma\ 1939, U <^4 No I3S

• 1(0

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

studying the board and waiting for Ins opponent to make some false
move which could be turned to his advantage.”^

Throughout the summer the remilitarization of Danzig, the training
of the local S S. and S.A. with arms smuggled across the frontier, and a
series of incidents designed to provoke the Poles, continued with little
remission. In the middle of June Goebbels appeared in the city and
made two violent speeches, reaffirming the German claim to its return.

While pressure was kept up on Poland, German propaganda through
the radio and the Press hammered home the argument that Danzig was
not worth a war, and that war was only likely because of the obstinacy
of the Poles. In their turn the Poles were warned not to trust their new
friends, the British, who would soon tire of their energetic attitude, and
sell them down the river, as they had sold the Czechs at Munich.

The centre of diplomatic activity during the summer was not Berlin,
but Moscow, where the British and French were attempting to reach an
agreement with the Russians. From time to time, however, Weizsacker,
the State Secretary at the Wilhelmstrasse, saw the British and French
Ambassadors m Berlin m order to sound them out. His arguments
always followed the same course: the rashness of Britain and France in
handing over the decision of peace or war to an irresponsible people
like the Poles. Britain, he told Henderson on 13 June, had abandoned
her traditional policy of no continental entanglements. “Instead of this,
Britain was now committing herself more and more on the Continent,
and permitting the Poles to gamble with the destiny of Great Britain.”^
Meanwhile relations with the other States in the German sphere of
influence were strengthened, in order to keep Poland isolated. The visit
of the Hungarian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to Berlin, at the
end of April, was followed by the State visit of Prince Paul, the Regent
of Y Ligoslavia, at the beginning of June Hitler laid himself out to please,
and, m addition to a gala performance at the Opera and a State banquet,
there was an impressive military review. A month later the Bulgarian
Prime Minister v/as feted m the German capital. The Germans showed
an equal interest m the Baltic The Pact of Non-Aggression signed with
Lithuania after the cession of Memelland was matched by similar pacts
with Latvia and Estonia, the governments of which had already com-
municated to London then wish to be left out of any attempt to organize
collective security in Eastern Europe.

Hitler’s principal concern, however, was the alliance with Italy. The

^ Henderson. Faila.e of a Mission^ page 228.

- Second German White Book, No. 307.

466

HiiLLil'S WAR, 1939

invasion of Albania in April, winch Mussolini and Ciano regarJeJ .h the
assertion of Italian independence, only bound them raurc the

Axis. Hitler was delighted: the Italian action urider’incd the linruncm
interest of the two dictatorships in face of the defender^ ch the vtr.v qm.
Great Britain and France. The Germans now began to press r’ne
signature of the military alliance which Mu-, dini had so far c’ aic !.
Ciano was uneasy about the state of German -Fuiwh rcUInco. 'MiC!
conversations with Goering in April, he noted in his diar} iliat Gi icroig’s
remarks about Poland were reminiscent oftlic tone used al othci
about Austria and Czechoslovakia. These anxieties were na're.iseii hy tlsC
reports of Attoheo, the itilian Ambassador in fkrlni. CTmo, ihcivlbre,
invited Ribbentrop to come to Italy, in the hope of w!kiI a.i.

in Hitler’s mind, and set off for their meetnv! al Ms! m lun h Mav j wiih
a memorandum m which the Dace laid great stress on llah’ , need oi
peace for a period of not less than three yea>s.

Ciano found Ribbentrop reassuring. He dnl ili^ctiisc Hitler''
determination to recover Dan/ig and secuie Ins ii; Uor^road lt» last
Prussia, but he was sympathetic to MussolimN iiwi>lcace on tl*e need !■»
defer war. "‘Germany, too,” he remarked, "‘is convinced ul the nei e- ^ it>
for a period of peace, wbich should not be less tliai. I^ur m tue

After dinner Ciano telephoned to Mussolini and reported Ihjt the
conversations were going well, rhereupon the Diice, on the spur of the
moment, apparently swayed by a gust o! anli-BrUwIi initatiosi alter a
year’s hesitations and doubts, ordered Ciano to publish ilic new ** Utat an
Italo-German alliance had been agreed iipi>n. R^hhciiU'op woulii have
preferred to wait until he could bring in .lapan as wAk bill wlien lie
telephoned to Hitler he found the Fuelircr eager to sei/c the cluinee
offered by Mussolini’s sudden change of uiiud, and duinuiiv avavit in
turn. The announcement of the alliance, Hitler VmL«» cu aoiuaf would
further weaken the British and french resolution to ^Uiad hv Pidand,
and he took care to draft the agreement la the ino4 far«i oicliing terms.
The Italians accepted the German draft with veiv few t Ganges, ami on
21 May Ciano arrived in Berlin for the formal signaiurc id the Fact of
Steel,

Hitler looked upon the Pact as ‘ triumph for ho dipionuo, and
great publicity was given to the ceicmony at uiuwii u s. ms\l. liie
Chancellery was ciowdcd v\ilh hrilhaiit unifornw, icspLudcni with
decorations. Cuno hud ime^ied Ribbentrop wuh the Collai of llic
Anniinziata the evening bcfoie, thereby making Imii llie CiUisifi of the
King of Italy, and seriouhly oifcnding Gueung, wfio nowily declared

H Lino’s ( luna's )h\iU f msn, - :.C-7.

4fi/

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

that lie should have received the decoration as the real architect of the
Alliance. Hitler, in the best of tempers, presided while the two Foreign
Ministers affixed their signatures. He had every reason to be pleased
with himself.

The preamble of the Treaty announced that “the German and Italian
nations are determined to act side by side and with united forces for the
securing of their living-space and the maintenance of peace.’’

Article II Should the common interest of the contracting parties be en-
dangered by international events of any kind whatever, they will immediately
enter into discussions over the measures to be taken for the protection of
these interests.

If the security or vital interests of one of the contracting parties be threat-
ened from outside, the other will give the threatened party full political and
diplomatic support m order to set aside this threat.

Article 111 If, contrary to the wishes and hopes of the contracting parties,
It should happen that one of them is involved in hostilities with anothei
Power or Powers, the other contracting paity will come immediately to its
side as ally and support it with all its militaiy forces on land, sea and in the
air. . . .

Article V: The contracting parties undertake now that in the event of a
war conducted in common they will conclude an armistice and peace only
in full agreement with each other.^

When due allowance is made for the conventional ambiguity of
diplomatic language, this may well be considered one of the most plain-
spoken and openly offensive alliances concluded in modern times.

The Alliance was followed by an agreement on the vexed question
of the South Tyrol, which was intended as a gesture on Hitler’s part
towards his Italian friends. Hiller agreed to the transfer of all persons of
German nationality from the South Tyrol to the Reich, thereby showing
complete disregard for the principle of nationality to which he had so
often appealed, but complete consistency with the views he had ex-
pressed in Mein Kantpf,

Mussolini’s chief anxiety, however, continued to be the possibility
of war. On 30 May, the day before General Cavallero left Rome to serve
on the military commission set up under the new Pact, the Diice gave
him a secret memorandum for Hitler which repeated many of the points
Mussolini had laid down in his memorandum for Ciano before the
Milan meeting He re-emphasized Italy’s need of a preparatory period
of peace extending as far as the end of 1942, and spoke of the advantages

^Text of the Treaty m Documents on International Affaits^ 1939-1946, voL I,
pages 168-70.

HITLi:R’S 'W \il, 1939

to be gained by further undeimming of the Wcdcrn Fiinerf •viil
resist Hitler’s reply was a vague suggestion that he dmnSil meet the
Duce for a discussion some time m the neai futuic Bc\t>nd ne m ^ le
no comment, and his silence seems to have been aceeplcd h) the l!,f * fri%
as assent.

Had Mussolini known what Hitler told his semor \rm}% \d\y ai d
Air Force ojfficers on 23 May, the day alter the Fad ui S cel had
signed, his anxiety would have been vastly inciea-ed. 'ilv. nicdiru, ln.e
that of November, 1937, was held in the ruehierA m the Reich
Chancellery. The audience this time numbered foiaieefc all loirii Ihe
Services. Among those present were Goeriny, Gener.J. von Hr mdi”
itsch, Keitel and Haider, and Admiral Raeder, tlie iskord ^4 Haler’s
remarks was taken by his adjutant, Liviitcnant*(\doiiel Sclimu^idt,
Hitler began from the same premises as m November, th^*

problem of Lebensr a mn, and the need to solve it by espaioion c isUwirds
Once again he ruled out a colonial solution as an allcrniUiuv Ihi'^ omc,
however, he passed rapidly over the assi'fnpnons 4 mi wlaclt \ ./\vs
were based, and came almost at once to the miiilarv problem Hie
shift from political to military consirleiations helwcen Nounnber,
and May, 1939, is striking.

War, Hitler told his officers, was inev liable.

Danzig IS not the object of our activities. It is a question u! e vpaniline, om
living-space in the east, of securing our foud-^opphes and of irie

Baltic problem. . . . There is no question ofspaniig Pol vJ and \vc ^ f
with the decision* To attack Poland at the first simaNe oppi^i *5it\.

We cannot expect a repetition of the C/cch alliMk Theie udi Ik* vu’T. Dir
task IS to isolate Poland. The success of this isolrUon u.li He dcic j* c. • » .
Theic must be no simultaneous conilxt \vuh the \\i'»U‘rn

If it IS not certain that a German— Polish contlici \i, if not ]c . j ir in iiie
west, the fighl must be piiraarily against I ugluki aiul I umc.

Basic principle: Conlhci with Polmd heguM r ^ aiIIi an aUacl on
Poland— will only be successful if the Weskin Fo‘>cr- keep oat. It iIim is
impossible, then it will be better to attack m the livesl and. 'Vv'dei!! lu wUk-
Poland at the same timed

Flitler then went on to discuss the chaiacler ol a w ti v iin Bnti'Ui,
whom he described as the driving ttfrex* against Getmaio , and id wlii-sc
strength he spoke with apprcciatioii. It woiikl, be decLucik rc a InN*-
and-death struggle and piobably oi Knig duralion “ I he i iluil we
can get off cheaply is dangerous; there is m> sikli Uc must

^N.D L-19, IkHiimenisim htinhtlu>ru! Mhdiss.h^^ / A I. p*

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

[ our boats. It is no longer a question of right or wrong, but of life
eath for eighty million human beings.”

uch that Hitler said about the conduct of a war with Britain is of
■est in the light of events a year later. He saw the Ruhr as Germany’s
point, and so made the occupation of Holland and Belgium, to
ect the Ruhr, a first objective. Britain’s weakness was her need of
borne supplies. The Army’s task, therefore, must be to overrun the
^ Countries and France in order to provide bases from which the
y and Air Force could blockade Britain and cut off her supplies,
lysing the lessons of the First World War, Hitler argued that a
eling movement by the German Army towards the Channel ports
le outbreak of war — instead of towards Paris — might well have been
sive. This was in fact to be his own strategy in 1940.
filer’s object was still, as it had always been, continental expansion
wards. The chief obstacle to his plans he now saw as England, not
nee as m Mein Kampf. indeed, there is barely a mention of France
)ughout Schmundt’s minutes. War between Germany and Great
ain, Hitler was convinced, could not be avoided. On the other hand,
vas not anxious to begin it yet. His immediate object, as it had been
year before in the case of Czechoslovakia, was a localized war to
[e with Poland. This time there could be no question of a repetition
Vlunich: war was certain. The great question was whether Poland
id be isolated and the war limited. This was his aim, but conceivably
night fail In that case Poland would be reduced to a side-issue, and
real struggle would be with the Western Powers. There was one
er case m which it would be necessary to attack Britain and France
)nce if they succeeded in establishing an alliance with Russia. But
ier does not seem to have taken this possibility very seriously and he
ressed the belief that Russia might well disinterest herself in the fate
^oland altogether.

"here was nothing wild or visionary about this view. Granted Hitler’s
pose of pursuing an expansionist policy, it was a sober and shrewd
miation of the risks Its weakness was Hitler’s failure to push his
dictions far enough into the future, and to reckon with the impor-
ce of the U.S A , or the strength of the Soviet Union. But, m the short
, Hitler was jqufierighl imthink^ th at he c onld ignore both Am erii^a -
i Russia, while his estimate of France’s weakness an d his
V to attack Britain are noteworthy.

ks it happens, we have a precise account of what German rearmament
1 achieved so far, given iti a lecture by General Thomas, Head of the
170

HiTLLR’S WAR, 1939

War Economy and Armaments Office, at the Foreign Olficc ilie day
after Hitler’s conference.^ From the Peace Treaty arm} of 7 infantry
and 3 cavalry divisions, which Hitler had found on takmg ofTiccy the
German Army had been expanded to a peacetime strciigtli of 3fi
infantry divisions (including 4 fully motorized and 3 moiintam di\i-
sions), 5 newly equipped Panzer divisions, 4 light cfiushms and 22
machine-gun battalions. In four years its peacetime sirci‘^lh had h.
increased from 7 to 51 divisions, compared with an e\pa:Hii)n from 43
to 50 divisions in the period from 1898 to 1914.

Behind these forces there stood a steadily increasing nuniher of
reserves and the most powerful armaments indiisUy in tfjc world, which
in time of peace had already equalled, and in part exaTcif, the pro-
duction performances of the First World War. Nor hr-l the \nn} Hce‘i
built up at the expense of the other branches uf the armed foats Smee
1933 the German Navy had put into service two batlicshmv of 2^3
tons ; two armouredcruisers of 10,000 tons; I7d"%tro\ersand-t7 I! hoaK.
It had launched, and was engaged on completing, two KiUicdiip,
of 35,000 tons (actually much larger, for one of them Wiis Ihc k);

4 heavy cruisers of 10,000 tons; an airemft cainci; 5 dcstiuuTs and
7 U-boats. The German Air Force, which had hc.v siitirc!} built up
since 1933, now had a strength of 260,000 men, wnh 21
consisting of 240 echelons. Its anti-aircraft forces, equipped wish ioiir
standard types of A A. guns, numbered close on three hundred haltenes

Such was the backing of force which Hitler had provided for his
diplomacy. If, numerically, the number of divisions Ch^riikin} coyld
put in the field was still smaller than that of the French i>r
Armies, in quality, leadership and equipment it Wus almus^ ceita:n!>
an instrument without equal — and this time Hiller was deicfruvn* ) U*
put it to use. On 14 June, the Communder-in-CIncf <?! the I hud.
Group, General Blaskowitz, issued orders fnvn his a; DrvGim io
have all preparations for the attack on Pvdand voundv e h\ 30
August 2 On 22 June, the O.K.W. presented a detailed t ^ < v die

attack, for which reserves were to be called up on l!i ‘ f?cie\t aui u 'u

manoeuvres.^ On the 24ih, the Army was crdcret^ to prefvuc nlar , !or
captiiiing the bridges over the Lower Vistula intact \ u oipih u, cf,

27 July, the order was drallcd for the occup.pison of Dau/iy, onb Tie
date being left blank for the Fuehrer to write in.‘

1 N.D. EC-28, 24 Mav, 1934. - N H ""C ’-P » V l> C -12^'

1 N.D. C420, N i

471

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Yet Hitler was in no hurry to move. He was still preoccupied with the
problem of localizing the war. Three months had passed since his speech
of 28 April; for three months the resolution of the Poles, and the deter-
mination of the British and French to stand by their guarantees, had
been subjected to strains, but had not been weakened. Only in one
direction could Hitler see an opening, in Moscow. The British had first
broached the idea of negotiations to the Russians in the middle of April.
After a difficult beginning, which resulted in a deadlock lasting to the
end of May, talks between British, French and Russian representatives
began m Moscow on 15 June. It was no secret, however, that agreement
was still very far off, and that neither side had lost its suspicions of the
other.

Hitler followed the course of these negotiations with interest. Without
the support of Russia, the one Great Power near enough to give active
help to Poland, the Anglo-French guaiantees must lose much of their
value. True, France and Britain could still attack Germany from the
west; but this would not prevent the German Army overrunning Poland,
and presenting the Western Powers with a fait accompli which would
make their continuation of the war futile. Could Germany do anything
to hinder the progress of the Moscow talks? Better still, was there a
possibility of substituting for an agreement between Russia, Britain and
France a Russo-German agreement, which would guarantee Russia’s
neutrality m the event of a war between Germany and Poland? In that
case, it could be argued, Britain and France would be forced to recog-
nize the impossibility of coming to the aid of Poland, and would either
put pressure on the Poles to accept the German demands or disinterest
themselves m what happened to Poland.

These possibilities were already being canvassed m the group around
Hitler as early as March and April.^ Such evidence as there is suggests
that Ribbentrop was an early advocate of a deal between Germany and
Russia, while Hiller was slower to make up ins mind and more wary.
The basis foi a deal was obvious. In the l ong run war between Germany
and Russia was inevitable, so long as Hitler persisted in looking
for Germany’s hving-space m the east. But, in the short run, there was
no conflict of interests. The last thing Hitler wanted was to become

^ The first hint of a possible change in the Soviet attitude was contained ui Stalin’s
speecn of 10 March, 1939.

412

hitler’s war, 1939

involved with Russia while he was still occupied with Pofiind. Stahn, m
his side, bad few illusions about Hitler’s ultimate ohjecLiw^ bu
eager to postpone the clash with Germany as long as possible. In default
of any alternative, Stalm had put forward various scheiuts lor ct^lleciive
security, but he had an inveterate distuist of the Pinner',,

doubted their determination to icsist Hiller if put to the le t any
pected them of trying to embroil the Soviet Union with (iennairv a
way of weakening both regimes.

In such a frame of mind, Stalm was likely to look on a separate deal
With Germany as very much to Russia’s advantage. It would eaa!)!e hiM
to buy time at the expense of Poland, and possiblv ^ecirc important
territorial and strategic advantages in Eastern Europe as pari of !iis
price. These could be used to strengthen the Soviet Unf n aisiUiSt the
day when Hitler should feel free to put his designs upnnst Rihuu ififii
operation Even after the German attack on the I'SS.R. in 1941,
Stalm was still prepared to justify the Pact of 1939 along these iiias *

The obstacle^ m the way were twofold: the extreme di It us! euvli side
entertained towards the othci, and the public comnulmciis lini
undertaken against the other. Hitler had made anti-lioKhcvism u nnn-
cipal Item of his propaganda stock-m-trade foi twentv vcaiN ru
Germany and abroad; he had built up his foreign redulons around
Anti-Comintern Pact, and, quite apart from propagiinda, i:e had alvuivs
looked towards Russia as the direction of German}'\ future c\pa:jsium
Next to Anti-Semitism, with which it was partly idcntdici!.
Bolshevism had been the most consistent theme in Ins earecr. Ilowinui
opportunist his attitude, and however cynical his Powivk

Russia once the Pact had served its purpose, Hitici hound to
hesitate in face of such a repudiation of his own past.

But how seriously were such arguments to be taken? Once f ev had
recovered their breath most people would be far more iiupretsCil hv liis
astuteness m getting the Russians to sign than ir^mlded alvutl hn
consiGiency, A rappiocbenieut with Russia wouUl evcii Iv wclc, "ued m
certain quarters. In the German Army, tJwj>;» pre(‘ccii]ned with tiie
danger of a war on two fronts, there had alwavs bciii a ' chaal rq ifiMiiuhi
which followed General von Scccki’s view and lavnure ' acuve ca'»-
laboration wiih Fliissia. In the German I oreigti OOicc, a p-. hvv ul
friendship wiili Russia had not lacked aiwocnles aftci 19 ks and Irnl
found expression iii the Treaty of Rapalfo m 19?2, wuee ttie Iwh*
countries had formed a common ironl agiUnsl llic vicior powcis. f\oii

H'i StaliiAkoadaiUofaiiih, n4Ujiii. bna: liar

of the Souet Union | London, I94S)

473

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

der Schulenbiirg, the German Ambassador m Moscow in 1939, was one
of the last disciples of von Maitzan and Brockdorff-Rantzau, the
architects of the Rapallo policy.) To those who were strugghng with the
economic problems of the Four- Year Plan, the ability to draw upon
Russian resources in raw materials would be a godsend. Finally, there
was the argument which weighed most of all with Hitler— this was the
surest way to isolate Poland, to deter the Western Powers from inter-
fering, and to keep the war localized.

These discussions were given added point by the news on 3 May that
Litvinov, the man most closely identified with the policy of collective
security and co-operation with the Western Powers, had been dismissed
from the office of Soviet Foreign Minister and replaced by Molotov.
Litvinov’s dismissal caused much excitement and raised great hopes in
the circle round the Fuehrer. On Whit-Monday Ribbentrop held a
meeting at Sonnenburg, at which it was decided that Weizsacker, the
State Secretary, should sound the Soviet Charge d’Aflfaires m Berlin in a
casual way. Trade negotiations between the two countries had been
about to begin for some time, but had been unaccountably delayed.
Nov/ the Germans proposed to start them m earnest, and it was by this
means that the first difficult contacts were made in May.

In June, negotiations were continued with the Soviet Commisar for
Foreign Trade, Mikoyan, and with Molotov, but the Germans encoun-
tered so suspicious and non-committal an attitude that, on 30 June,
Hitler ordered the German representatives to break off. A pause of
three weeks followed. Then, on 22 July, the Soviet Government
announced that the trade talks would be renewed in Berlin. Four days
later, on the evening of 26 July, Schnurre, who was in charge of the talks
on the German side, took Astakhov, the Soviet Charge, and Babarin,
the head of the Russian Trade Mission, out to dinner.

Schnurre’s instructions were to raise once more the possibility of
political, as well as economic, negotiations. “What could England offer
Russia?” he asked his two guests. “At best, participation in a European
war and the hostility of Germany, but not a single desirable end for
Russia What could we offer, on the other hand ? Neutrality and staying
out of a possible European conflict, and, if Moscow wished, a German-
Russian understanding on mutual interests which would work out to
the advantage of both countries.”^

Ribbentrop followed up Schnurre’s conversation by instructing the

^ Schnurre’s Report, 27 July, 1939 Printed in Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941:
Documents from the Archives of the German Foreign Office (U.S. Dept, of State,
Washington, 1948), pages 32-6.

474

hitler’s war, 1939

German Ambassador to see Molotov and propose political talks along
the lines Schnurre had indicated.

In any development of the Polish question [Ribbcntrop wrote], eiiLti m a
peaceful manner or m any other way, we would be prepared to sjiegaard all
Soviet interests and to reach an understand mg with the Moscow Gcwcniment,
If the talks proceed positively, in the Baltic Question, too, die idea coulil
be advanced that we will adjust our stand with regaid to the Balfic in
such a manner as to respect the vital Soviet interests m the Balticd

On several occasions during the summer the British and French
Governments had repeated, in the cleaiesl possible teniis, ifunr deter-
mination to stand by their promises to Poland. But f lulei was now con-
vinced that, if his approach to Moscow were to prove soccessfuk he luu!
hit upon the way of breaking the political deadlock, piising open the
door barred by the British guarantee to Poland, and enforcing lii'> will
on the Poles without the risk of a general war.

In his dispatch of 27 July, the French Chaigc d’Afliircs m Berlin
reported that Hitler had apparently not yet readied n dccjsion, and was
still balancing between Ribbentrop’s view that (iermany cuiikl •-iiiiiv
her demands without risk of a general war and Goennpk that anv
further move by Germany was bound to lead to a conflict uilf* the
Western Powers. On 3 August, however, M. uc St. iiardodin wrote:
“In the course of the last week a very definite change in ihc poLiiCiil
atmosphere has been observed in Berlin. . . . The period id embarrass-
ment, hesitation, inclination to tempori/ation or even to appcasoLicnU
which had been observable, has been succeeded by a new phased’*"'

The most obvious sign of this change was the rciicwal i>l the Press
campaign, which had been damped down since June, flic -.tope ui' the
campaign was now enlarged to include Genmii claims n t to

Danzig, but to the whole of the Coiiidor, and eua To cn and
Upper Silesia, claims which were supported by a sL al} atf*. ji iT
reports describing Polish oppression ol the Gcniian imitivip, m ilusc

provinces.

At the same time the interference of the German, m DdU/ri v n!i ibe
Polish customs and frontier guards in the Free luiOaarv, and IbTsh

economic reprisals, led to the most serious crisis so tar in the ifispiae * ocr
the city. When the Danzig authorities notified a numnj'i of the Pohdi
customs officers that they would be prevented Iroiti c.irsViin' oat iheir
duties, the Polish Government, alarmed at the uiiJeimiiiiiic oi dicir

^ German Foreign Office to the Geinwn Ainbasssidor in Mi« .vOW,
Nazi-Somt Reiatwtn, page 36. , r

-M de St. Hardoum to M Bonnet, 3 August. innui }

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

rights, sent an 'ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of the order under
a time limit. The reply v/as a denial that any such order had been issued.
The affair did not rest there. On 7 August, Forster, the Gauleiter of
Danzig, was summoned to the Obersalzberg, and on his return told Carl
Burckhardt, the League High Commissioner, that Hitler had reached
the extreme limits of his patience. This was followed by a sharp exchange
of notes between the Polish and German Governments, each warning
the other of the consequences of further intervention. On the 11th,
when Burckhardt himself visited Hitler, the Fuehrer threatened that
“if the slightest thing was attempted by the Poles he would fall upon
them like lightning with all the powerful arms at his disposal, of which
the Poles had not the slightest idea. M Burckhardt said that that would
lead to a general conflict. Herr Hitler replied that if he had to make war
he would rather do it today than tomorrow, that he would not conduct
it like the Germany of Wilhelm II, who had always had scmplcs about
the full use of every weapon, and that he would fight without mercy
up to the extreme limit.”^

Hitler was still waiting with growing impatience for news of the
Russian reception of his proposal before he dealt Poland the blow with
which he intended to punish her for her insolent refusal of his earlier
offer. Schulenberg, the German Ambassador, saw Molotov on 3 August
and reported hopefully that Molotov had abandoned his usual reserve,
showing considerable interest m the offer to provide for Soviet interests
m Poland and the Baltic States British and French Military Missions to
extend the scope of the talks were on their way to Moscow, where they
arrived on 11 August. It was clear that a decision by the Soviet Govern-
ment, winch had been promised by Molotov at the interview on the 3rd,
could not be much longer delayed.

In Rome, meanwhile, Ciano decided that the time had come for him to
learn what the Germans were planning For some weeks he had dis-
counted the reports of Attoheo, the Italian Ambassador in Berlin, as
alarmist. But towards the end of July Italian suggestions for an inter-
national conference, m which Mussolini saw himself repeating his
Munich success, were rejected by Ribbentrop, and a meeting of the two
dictators on the Brennei was postponed. Ciano began to feel a little
uneasy, not least because of the silence and evasiveness of the German
leaders: these were the usual signs that they meant to spring a surprise
on their allies But this time a surprise might mean v/ar. At Ciano’s

^ Report of M Carl Burckhardt, High Commissioner of the League at Danzig,
(Geneva, 19 March, 1940), pimtcd m Documents on hitei national AJJairSj 1939-1946,
vol. I, pages 346-7.

476

hitler’s war, 1939

urgent request Ribbentrop agreed to meet him at Salzburg on If
August. “Before letting me go,” Ciano recorded in his Diar}, “Musso-
lini recommends that I should frankly inform the Germans that we must
avoid a conflict with Poland, since it will be impossible to localize it,
and a general war would be disastrous for everybody Ne\er has liie
Duce spoken of the need for peace so unreservedly and with so muc!i
warmth.”^

When they met at Salzburg the two Foreign Ministers spent aUogethcr
ten hours in each other’s company. Ciano pleaded with all the eloquence
at his command for a peaceful settlement of the dispute with Poland;
he found himself up against a brick wall. Ribbentrop prockuined a
German-Polish conflict inevitable.

I must add [Ciano reported] that he gives the impression of an uiireasoiuihie,

obstinate deterramalion to bring about this conflict he suns fiom two

assumptions which it is useless to discuss with him, since he b>

repeating the same axioms, and avoiding any discussion. These a\ioms are.
(1) That the conflict will not become general. ... (2) Tiut, esen dioiiki
France and Britain wish to intervene, they are faced with the physical
impossibility of injuring Geimany or the Axis, and that the conflict wmikl be
certain to finish with the victory of the totalitarian Powers.^

Ciano’s suggestion of a settlement by conference was bi ushed .wdc.
Ribbentrop refused, however, to tell Ciano what Germany pri)piwcd
to do — “all decisions were still locked m the Fuehrer’s iinpcncfrabk*
bosom.” So convinced was he that the Western Powers would not
intervene that, m the course of one of their meals, he wagered Ciapj'* a
collection of old armour against an Italian painting that he would be
proven right ^urjearsjater,^ sitting m gaul at Ycroiu, waiting lo be
shot by the Germans,„Ciano reflected with some butcnuws ihai Rihbcu-
trbp had neglected to pay his debt
^Ciano described the atmosphere of his talks with Ribhcnirop as icy.
Hiller, whom he was taken to see the following <iay at the Bergbui, wun
more cordial, but equally implacable in his decision. He was alrcidy
lost in military calculations, and received Cuno with Ins Niathiiup*
spread out on the table before him. The first pari of tlie iriltTvicw was
entirely taken up with Hitler’s demonstration of the stieiigf!i ot CSei
many’s military position. “Alter the conquest of PoLiiul {winch could he
expected in a short time) Germany w’ould be m a post lion ti ^cmble
for a general conflict a hundred divisions on the Vvcwi Wall As lor
Poland, she was too weak to withstand the Geiman attack, aial liider

^Ciano's Diatw 1939-1943 fPngliAh Uanslatitm. PniiOnn, I 'HO, paw L!l
2 Oano’s Minutes, Gam's Diphmatu Papers, v.m >

477

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

repeated Ribbeiitrop’s suggestion that Italy should take advantage of the
occasion to dismember Yugoslavia.

In reply Ciano set out with a wealth of detail Italy’s weakness and
lack of preparations for war, complaining that, despite the alhance so
recently signed, the Germans had never informed their allies of the
gravity of the situation or of their own intentions. But Hitler, he noted,
listened with a far-away look.

Actually [Oano wrote in his Diary] I feel that, as far as the Germans are
concerned, an alliance with us means only that the enemy will be obliged
to keep a certain number of divisions facing us, thus easing the situation on
the German war fronts. . . . The fate that might befall us does not interest
them in the least. They know that the decision will be forced by them rather
than by us.^

Hitler offered a variety of reasons for his decision to attack the Poles,
none of which Ciano took very seriously. But Hitler was quite precise
about dates. The whole campaign must be concluded by 15 October,
when the rains and mud could be expected. The question whether to
attack or not would have to be settled by the end of August at the latest.
“The Fuehrer was determined to use the opportunity of the next political
provocation ... to attack Poland within forty-eight hours and to solve
the problem in that way.”^

Ciano did his best to argue with Hitler but without effect. Convinced
that the Western Powers would not intervene, Flitler was prepared to
dispense with Italian aid, and said so. He agreed to consider Ciano’s
suggestion of the offer of an international conference, but obviously
only as a matter of form. While they were still talking a telegram arrived
from Moscow announcing Russian agreement to the dispatch of a
German delegation to negotiate. This incident bears all the marks of
having been staged for Ciano’s special benefit: it confirmed the im-
pression that everything had been decided already, and that Hitler only
continued to listen to the views of his Italian allies out of politeness.

The next day, 13 August, wken the conversation was renewed, Ciano
made no further eftbrt to alter Hitler’s mind. Hitler finally disposed of
the suggestion of a conference and spent the rest of the time repeating
what he had said the day before, with renewed emphasis on his belief
that Britain and France would bluster but do nothing more. He added
that, if they should intervene, this would show that they had already
decided to move against the Axis, and were not in any case prepared to

^ Ciano^s Diary, pages 124-5

Schmidt’s Mirutcs, N D 1371-PS Another German version in N.D TC-77.
Ciano’s account in Ciano\ Diplomatic Papers, pages 299-303

478

iinuR^s V, \R, 1939

allow the Aais Powers the further period oi prcpuj ti * v. : a h \f f-
imi desired. ‘The Western DcnK^cracies %sctc C )niu.a\‘ ! hi :hedcvre Ih
rule the world, and would not regard Cjent 3 dn> ai Ii ? ihia’

This psychological element of contempt was perti-ie^ d,e !hn;/
about the whole business. It could unl> he seithAi a h! ‘ aml-d * i‘n
struggle.’’^

Ciano confined himself to confirming the date n : c.aay . TLh i
replied, would be o\er in a lortnighl, aov'l i hr^her n . fh u ,.i.; be
required for the final liquidainm uf PoLtrd. the wh/^Ie ,har
be settled between the end of \i\msX ih. :mdJL'

Hitler added the usual assurances that lha Mt J \*rra^:ein ua^ If f\ -
sphere in which he would never seek to mLh: e, a!u!
fortunate to have been born '\u a time in Wiuch, ipao u .

there was one other statesman who would ^tand oai , 0 * 'u\il ,md juiqu ‘
in history: that he could he this nian\ irsead was for a mailer oi
great personal satisfaction/'

Ciano was not taken in. 'i return to Rome/' he wrote a- hi . I) .
“completely disgusted with the Cicimanx with /ur rad , aiui aUh
their way of doing thmgi. they ha\e hetra}ed a. and lied lo lo No \
they arc dragging us into an advcnltire w 1 . a we ilo rr a .wirl and n
may compromise the regime and the comUry as wh*. k “'**

There is no need to look far fo; an expliisils n i 1 the iiidifieri iiu:
Hitler and Ribbentrop showed towards the aH,v liw} hati weknj'feu with
such effusiveness three months befoie. It was the rn^^pwxl 1 1 an ai’rce-
ment with Russia w3iich now da//L\! the 1 iiehircr and ins t
Minister. There was always a strong clenienl of pers^au! tceu ai \n all
Hitlei’s policies; he was eager to score off his opponcotv I t icfxjv in the
most dramatic form possihh* il e ch.cck lie liad e\"\ ea i::

To sign a treaty with a government he luui hi/u'rio oeiled diai u:>
remitting hostility, at the verv moment wl»en ‘1..‘ fh : 3,^ .rac, I . ‘ucL
Missions W’ere still negotiating m the RuN>kiii eao.t,/ tfui wa^ ilic -or.
of revenge which appealed to lu\ \dniij

Yet the agreement had still to he iiegomued. am! ua> i u fron me
so certain as Ribbentrop had siiggeMed io ( lano. I he Rn.aan. ‘"U re in
no hurry, and m tlie latiwt comnijiiicaiion which the (iciniftw had
received spoke of discussions “'io he undertaken nnl} f^y devices."
Hitler, with his eyes on the ilcadhne he iuid fixed loi the attack im
Poland, began to piess tor the iiegofiatnm. to o.arl at once. On 14

^German Minute, NJ), t, ia5io\ in Ctu/'a ihj aanoa' ^ .

pages 303-4.

Cmno's Dmrw page 1 2>.

4?l

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

August Ribbentrop telegraphed to the German Ambassador in Mos-
cow, instructing him to see Molotov — if possible, Stalin — and to suggest
that he should himself come to Moscow for direct discussions with the
Russian Government. He was to add, as a further inducement, that in
the opinion of the Reich Government ‘‘there is no question between the
Baltic and the Black Seas which cannot be settled to the complete
satisfaction of both countries. Among these are such questions as:
the Baltic Sea, the Baltic area, Poland, South-Eastern questions, etc.”^

Molotov still found reasons for delay. Expressing appreciation of
Ribbentrop’s offer, he proceeded methodically to enquire what was to
be discussed. W^ejLhe Germans, for instance, prepared to exercise
pressure on the Japanese and persuade them to adopt a^diffexeiiLattituds
towards Russi^ Did the Germans wish to conclude a pact of non-
a^ggression ? If so, what were to be its provisions, and so on. Ribbentrop
at once replied, accepting all Molotov’s suggestions and reiterating the
need for haste. This time he suggested a date for his proposed visit: any
time after Friday, 18 August. Molotov, quick to see the advantage to
be gpined from the Germans’ eagerness, fell back on the need to prepare
for the conference in the most thorough way. If the economic agreement
could be signed at once, for example, the German Foreign Minister
might come to Moscow in a week’s time, say, on 26 or 27 August: in
the meantime Molotov handed the German Ambassador a draft of
the proposed Pact \vhich his Government could study. The Germans
immediately signed the economic agreement, but they were not prepaied
to wait another week. On the 20lh, Hitler intervened with a direct appeal
to Stalin, asking him to receive Ribbentrop on the 22nd, or at the latest
23 August.

Hiller’s telegiam was sent oft' on the afternoon of Sunday the 20th.
Throughout the rest of Sunday and ail day Monday Hitlei waited on
tenterhooks for Stalin’s reply Would the Russians sti!l go through with
the deal? Would they agree to his need of a quick decision? Worst
of ail, would they, at the moment, reach agreeaieni with the British
and French? Unable to sleep. Hitler rang up Goeiiiig m the middle of
the night to express his aoxiet} at the long time Suilin was taking to
decide.

At last, on the Monday nioramg, Schulcnln g telegraphed Stalin’s
reply:

To the ChiuK) iloi of the Gti’ an Reich, 4. Hitiei .

I think you for your letter. I ho’-^e tfirt ihi Gciinm-Soviet Non-Aggression

^ Ribheiitiop to Schuienburg, 14 August, 1939 \azi Soutt McLuons, pages 50-2

480

HI f I 1 k\ %\ VH, I H

Pact mill mail a deCKicd tuin tor the . .1 j . ‘'m .

our two countries. . . .

The Soviet Go^ernrrvnt lu^ i . htc >.4 ' c to .t s,i , 4. ' .t; *

to Herr von Ribbcatrop\ arnvta^ 'u M, 1 ^ on 2 ^ \ ^ *

Hitler had already accepted \h;!oUv/s dr It o. * „ ’P . ’ 4 ^ •

Russian proposal contained a pua<np* nl ! . ■“ . 4 at ‘r j .c

the text to be published. "I he pre^e il Pa* s'” ‘ -e Ra r r a .
“shall be valid only if a speciu! p:.n/K . si '*• c ^ ‘a- ^ ^
covering the points in which the I LuG fontiacLO'j .. a. /.n, .

m the held of foreign pol!cj.““

To put It in crude lenn s the Sn.^ei ( hue*' ^ n* tf ^ . I ' - . ^ ,

Sign until it learned what its sis re « i fhc ^|Hnt ^ , Git

Eastern Europe was to he pa-se’ied inio ‘tpsci/ <- . .s ' I’ ta

complete this pnccNS of hinse-tKkimg tlial Hihh '.g*
fly to Moscow. But to llulcr the inic i 1 g c Unit i > '’e eu Wu ihc Pa.!
For the Pact, whakver 10 prec’k^ wurdi . v t»na} ussr^ hr r. c-i Pe t
of Russia, the end ^ 1 the We-le 0 P«rAer , lu p. . ^ • v . 1 s » .

collccthc security m Lastein i urwj e, asr! tlr rv-LCnJit *'“1 I** * ’lO il

concessions had to he madt lo ku ' "iii ♦! i a 1 1 1 i.r \ 1 1 j !, (r i i < 1 *' ui i r is *’'* *

retracted later: Hitler had never hHiud ii ihhiwuli a- .e t.*-) e ^ -ce

ments which had ouilivcti I lien u>duh‘ivo lo .. S*. r . ^ i..uc 1 *

was prepared to promise anrhing, and wUl-a.f a aieccv' t' lu '.na'UiV
he signed the scrap of paper cordenhiy pIcmiKs.w* are. ^ pMvr* on
Ribbeiitrop, adding ()n!> uheprovisathai wiUak ver,;p!cemc,M ... e i ei.a
into should come into ioice tis Ua.y v.cie uK ru \ti\ wih

this authority, wiiliin a lew htmis Ribbcia.np wa^ on la- Ha> h} pl.n t
to Moscow.

Ribbbni Rop kit car!) ( a d' MiU/rniia’ f! d. , d. v

after another of the senior conmiai.ar ‘ oi l»c Xoi... . .‘.jr, do u
the mountain road w the IkTglo l loi a c.. f.fcie vc .|xv.afv Mir’OioT.cJ
by the Fuehrer. Flics found lam ui hi> nr *4 \a'M ' i ira>»ao .he hho iti
Destiny who held the issue of peace o^ wei m la hamfs. Oiil ide U was a«
hot, peacdiil sumnier da) in ilic moan \n u hi .Cc iIk IhikT

stood behind a lai-c desG 0^4 * ih^ ,01% , ai in a hall-siuic heinre

him. No discussum was peiinuted; ihc) Wwie ih. le to Irlcii. Aswawiime

^ i\iiz> ^oue^ ileiaiiiPin^ |\i*k a 1 " Ihi- » . < ^ ^ , p/' <1 iri

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

to one version, Hitler broke off his address to enlertam the geneials to a
meal, and went on with Ins talk afterwards No official record was kept,
but surreptitious notes were taken by more than one officer, and these,
while not a veibatim account of Hitler’s words, supply a substantial
version of what he said ^

As late as last Spring [Hitler began] my mtention was to postpone the
solution of the Polish question. . . m order to settle first the conflict with the
west, which is unavoidable in my opinion. ... It became clear to me however
that Poland would attack us m case of a conflict with the west.

Hitler then set out the factors which made the present situation un-
usually favouiable for Geimany to act against Poland.

First of all two personal factors: my own personahty and that of Mussolini.
Essentially it depends on me, on my existence, because of my political
ability Piobcibiy no one will ever again have the confidence of the German
people as I have There will probably never again be a man with more
authority than I ha\e. My life is, therefore, a factor of great value. But I can
be eliminated at any time by a criminal or an idiot.

The second peisonal factor is the Duce. His hie is also a decisive factor.
If something happens to him, Italy’s loyalty to the alliance will no longer
be certain. , . ,

On the other side, a negative picture. . . . There is no outstanding
personality m Enghind or France.

Foi us it IS easy to make decisions, Wc have nothing to lose, we can only
gam Our eccnomic situation is such that we cannot hold out for more than
a fev^ yeais Goeung can confirm this. We have no other choice, we
must act. Our opponents risk much and can gam only a little. England’s
stake in a war is unimaginably great.

Hitler then turned to the political factors which favoured Germany
There was tension m the Mediterranean, in the Far East and in the
Middle East, and liis was bound to preoccupy Britain. The British
Empire had emerged in a weakened state from the last war; France’s
position had also deleii^^oted As for the other States, none of them
would move “All these toitunate circumstances will no longer prevail
in two or tliiee years No one knows how long I shall live. Therefore
war IS better now “

Hitler repeated lus view that the chances of British and French inter-

* The \crsion of Hitler’s remarks used here is (1) ND 798-PS {Documents on
intef national Affaus, 1939-1946, voi I, pages 443-7), and (2) ND 1014-PS Obid ,
pages 447-8) Both come from the O K W files and were captuied at Saalfelden,
in the T>to1 Anothei and more sensational version (N D L-3) was not used at
Nuremberg, and has not been used here Yet another version, written down by
Admiral Boehm on the mght of 22 August, is contained m the Raeder Defence
Document Book No 2, Doc 27 A comparison of it with 1014-PS and 798-PS is
to be found m N D D-876 and 877.

482

iniit R ^ \ Vi 1 v3 )

veiUiOR wcic slight, anil th ,i vt i r;.ci > 1 i ^

case, fieithv i Britain nor I u \ i ■. p ^ ‘a i ' i ;
to Poland

ITie West has ufilv twu pi) ^nilU'j s in i ^ s i

Will not beelltcli\t hc\.au c sn i j a i i h c n . i
aid in the East. ^2) Attack in the Iro *1 thi., \\ i ’ i i I v
this impossible.

The enemy hid another hope, ilut Ru i 7 4 i i n <*.r . i
after the conquesf of Punml fliccitiihi! ^ u o m w i t

dcteimiiiation Our tntrn C*» , «». ! illy W N I % .r i 'dia:-. i
convinced that Sialio \vi iild icupt U l f la ! h

dismissal was decisive .. Thv dav tai K nt^iutv i', ^ 1*.

the treat} Now Poland is n the i on ir ^ ^ i i

Wc need n >l be air <»! a K’k idi Hi till lop u •, t ) « i
cattle, coal, lead and /int U ’ a imi v j; Ji dt a ' ^ g ** it td ^ I in*

only afraid that at I tst m ii s mi S i nh / J i i pi N*.. i f ! m i
mediation The pohiicai dm c«x-» t mla i Ate p iiM m i h in
the desliutton of tnghidN Ik cin^mv IIk \ s\ m open t»n tiu aOu!
now that 1 !ia\e m ide the poh! e \l piep i ons

In the second part ol liis tifk Hi kr rcMiined to the r..d loi non
resolution

A long peiiod of peasi \um!d not sk u n i\‘oJ It] 4 v in all w
that fight each other, but nitn. . Me ^ til u o dts in Pits

the nation tell because the rntn il p t Ks wwte s4 i uiii i n
Tilt desirucliort n| Pill I id Si iptl Uti ha nt )J ^ I hn o vt nssid
propaganda reason hn staifi i ^ uk vv n vlKthvi p’ u rk r mo i iu oi
will not be isktd, latci on. whs. as Is ^^!d ^hs ^nidi 4 n^l. f.i a 'siiy. 1
making wdi it is not r U. but vk ti m lUsi

Have no pit} Biulal ittitikk I ghv in lU p innMUwa.t * hi i
light Their exisitixe niiist lx ‘'tv id \i in sis (1 . at s < vi ^

With this exhortaf! m IIitLr disini cd his cnci d Hie cri lUa i o!
Greater Germany had bun an KliKHtaun piduitii % h told ths fii,
but nmlilarily it was qiie iaoii ibk* iiKt if hit Iv hy M ill

It was BOW' necessary to test the \inr diltuuuii h^ had h/ile vluiibi lhat
It would come op to lequirunents \s fui Ilk ups i jo ^ uk wax u<t
probable time would be at dawn on Soiirda}, 2t» \iq mI

Hitler stayed on at the Iknghot, w isuna tor news Irion Mo.i n to:
the icst of i1k 22nd and lor uu whule o. Wedne dav, the 2kd it was
here that Heiidwison, the Briti ' kmba ,-ado! Umu’ ^ 1 mi on Wcihii wlav
afternoon alter flying from l.iim On the piiwiuas day the liiilisli

^ lui f I s

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Cabinet had met to discuss the announcement that Germany and Russia
were about to conclude a Pact of Non-Aggression. Contrary to Hitler’s
expectation, they proceeded to issue a communique which announced:
“The Cabinet had no hesitation m deciding such an event would in no
way affect their obligation to Poland, which they have repeatedly stated
and which they are determined to fulfil.” To leave no doubt that they
meant what they said, the British Government began to^ up reservists
and ordered their Ambassador in Berhn to deliver to Hitler personally

a letter from the Prime Minister.

It was a letter couched m the most unambiguous terms.

It has been alleged [Mr. Chamberlain wrote] that if H.M. Govemm^t had
made their position more clear m 1914 the great caiastrophe would have
been avoided. Whether or not there is any force m this allegation, H.M.
Government are resolved that on this occasion there shall be no such

tragic misunderstanding. i

If the case should arise, they are resolved, and prepared, to employ with-
out delay all the forces at their command, and it is impossible to foresee
the end of hostilities once engaged.^

Having made the British position clear, Mr. Chamberlain went on to
express the view that there was no issue between Germany and Poland
which could not be settled by negotiation, and to offer suggestions of
ways in which such negotiations might be begun.

The effect of this letter, the gist of which had been communicated in
advance, was to rouse Hitler to a fury. No sooner had he received
Henderson than he launched into a violent tirade against the British,
upon whom he laid the mam blame for the crisis: it was the Bntish
sLranlce to Poland, he declaied, which had prevented the whole
affair being settled long ago. He gave the wildest account of Polish
excesses against the German minority in Poland, refused even to con-
sider the suggestion of negotiations, and bitterly reproached the British
for the way in which they had rejected his offers of friendship.

To all appearance Hitlei was a man whom anger had driven beyond
the reach of rational argument, yet Weizsacker, who was present,
records - “Hardly had the door shut behind the Ambassador than Hitler
slapped himself on the thigh, laughed and said: ‘Chamberlain won’t
survive that conversation, his Cabinet will fall this evening’.’’^

At a second interview, later m the afternoon, Henderson found the
Chancellor m a calmer frame of mind, but as unprepared as before to

'The British Blue Book (Cmd 6106)- Documents concerning German-Polish
Relatwr, and the Outbi eak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany (London,

1939), No 56

^ Weizsacker* page 203.

484

HU I I R\ V \ ^

make a single conuesMon. '‘I --poke iLj i\ II • k " • '

reported, “and of his immerse ha. . • a V

would be all England^ fault. . . * He uun 1 r f.a% ^ ^ r. > i: ■ i"

preferred war now to when he wouki he hl:y^v.a ^ ’ ti ^ u* ^

note of the British inleotaui to fulul hxh gear ^ - d.. t

he added, could make no duTerenie to Ij^ del .*'-.0 " U.Ui '* ,

attacked by England, win he fuanl piipared / o ^ ^ ^-

None the less, it Wci/ acke;\ avs saa i, t- r * t* ./i i, II ur
more impressed b> the Bntuli Uaiid ihi" he ^ v ^ se-0

morning, Thursda> the 24th, he ioriir.'ea ■ ‘ W. / a < c. fha^ se iMh
considerable doubts about the I Lihans. Ihern-.J^ . .'ss' . ' - win h.

he had addressed the general had bxit s' jao .'ed, ’ll . » ',Oi . . i, r

worried ahoat the nrospcs.^ cd\i gene! a I wo i . . ' • -’A ,L ; : iLo

upon the cflcct of the announcement llait t! e f i‘ ' 'Vt » een <i/:i m ' asui

Russia had acliiall} been coiaiuded. I ih\ '’s no .. , 2'^ \ i . k

at four-forty in the morning, wa*» sonf^rmed a> ihe a fte ,ae ooum-'O

The news froiii Mu^cow wa> \u^i h. *, a* B ' on d»e \^nd

and spending the night at Kocm*’’ ^ R.hberto , euv .... : r Bu m *a
capital at noon on the 23rd lie dr(>-e am ' uurndi/A'U i > Us

Kremlm for his first talk wuh Slain .nd \i< 1 •, a < . -s ca Uw k*. I

back to the German Eubass) lor a 1 uiiWi uniM Ue iU '' j hcn *>f
humours: e\cr>tiiing wa» giang well, aineeaiem woukt he hmsIicU
before the esening was out.

In his second Ciuner^aiiu.. Rihbentn'P Ciir g ..d ^ - ^ 'i

walk Stalin and Muhitov. Their AOineo.aU.'-it tu ' A m’, • ^ / a , U,i ;

Turkey, Englind, trance and the \nn < i ae.i \ 'i ;sa

barrassed, perhaps, ai the relcKUkJ to be i ^ ‘ ‘ 3..0 a^ 1 n uaa

diplomatic maslerpiete, Rshbenlrop n hn \ \iMnjire?n

Pact was basically directed nnt ag*tmsi Ih-' s mc! I i\u v h,ii oaiciU
the Western DcmokTacies. He knew Ih a 'L. So-^.* Ci^we.ai’ient IjIIh
recognized this fact. Herr Suhn inteipi* il u n : \' pa imnaein
Pact had m fact frighicnet! pniicspally the i uv ol I oiuloa afu! tlie iinatl
British merchantsd'

The eseniiig appears to have hw*ei p ^ ed* in the most co>rdial alia, s-
phere. When toasts were ilrnin , “fl irbiaii'i -poi laoeou l>
toast to the I uehrer: i kn av lava m u' th.‘ CieHiuin nalion loves i\%
Fuehrer;! should therefore like ti> dr ink hn ik.iUh liy dien the *ciuhis

^ Sir N. Hcndeison to Lord H ifu's 24 \ 5 .. i t, Pou 5 n\^ c Bonk, No Sa.

II d . No no

^Gcinun Minute vi tht di cm siuns, \u,« S/Uit /.Vika ) a i,es '2 6,

4K5

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

business had been transacted, and copies of the Agreement were being
prepared for signature.

The first document was a straightforward pact of non-aggression.
In the event of either parly becoming involved in war, each agreed to
give no help to the other’s enemies; nor was either to participate in any
grouping of Powers aimed directly or indirectly at the other. Constant
consultation and the settlement of differences by arbitration were
provided for, the treaty being concluded in the first place for ten years,
with a possibility of extension.

To this public treaty was appended a protocol of the utmost secrecy,
which only became known after the war. By this Germany and Russia
agreed to divide the whole of Eastern Europe into spheres of influence,
the limits of which were outlined in three clauses. In the first, Finland,
Estonia and Latvia were recognized to lie in the Soviet sphere, Lithuania
and Vilna in the German. In the second, a partition of Poland was fore-
shadowed along the line of the Rivers Narew, Vistula and San. “The
question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the
maintenance of an independent Polish State, and how such a State
should be bounded, can only be definitely determined in the course of
further political developments.” In the third aiticle Russia stated her
interest in the Rumanian province of Bessarabia. Ribbentrop, with an
eye to German economic interests in that part of the world, was content
to declare Germany’s “complete political disinterestedness in these
areas.”^

In the early hours of the 24th both documents were signed, and by
one o’clock m the afternoon Ribbentrop was on his way back to Berlin.
He had been in Moscow just twenty-four hours. Delighted with the
reception he had been given and tiiumphant at the result of his visit,
he returned to Berlin filled with enthusiasm for Germany’s new friends.
Stalin was less easily carried away. As lire German delegation left the
Kremlin he took Ribbentrop by the arm and repealed. “The Soviet
Government lakes the new Pact very seriously. I can guarantee on my
word of honour that the Soviet Union will not betray its partner.”
The doubts were barely concealed.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Ribbentrop’s discussions in
Moscow was the careful way in which both sides avoided mention of
ihc State, on the partition of which they had virtually signed agreement.
Yet if ever the death warrant of a nation was signed in cold blood it
was at Moscow, and Ribbentrop returned to Berlin in the firm behef
that he brought with him an agreement which gave Hitler a free hand to

^ Text of ireaty and of the additional Protocol, Nazi-Soviet Relations, pages 76-8.
486

Hnn

deal the Poles a blow from b ch tb^} \\n ' ! hr i • \ i ‘ r

To get this Ribbentrop had Ixen piepjK'ii o? ^ ^ , m a: *

relations with the Italimr. and the Jap.aie ed tr a .* - * e of d '

Anli-Comititeiii Pact of which he h lu ! ^ * ; a , a a J t

grant sweeping concessions to the Rn an- i j ! o -r* j ^ | f. i,
diately, these appeared a smrJI pnee lo p ^ < a . ^ ona ^ ' i

diplomatic coups in htdory, which at j I n. .. « f e i ^

Soviet Alliance of 1935, the long-drassmoui ne vaatjon* ■ 1 1^*/'

and French in Moscow, and - as R’b’wnircp 'a - . m T* c - fM

British and French guarantees of supr. ti 1.^ p. I nu..

Hitler had already relurncd to Fh: ' on : * .1 "a n M a
waiting to greet III hoieign "‘TiniP 'r . a

that inuicates clearly enough the uai^ .c pi ‘ce lu Ciwfnir'i i o* 'i\ as ah
he now claimed for himself

That evening Ic spent with ii and Us/ i », iiacn

to Ribbcntrop\ accciinl of his reser/i-*i in i!i'‘

Bismarck'’ was still under the inipic^ mn o! hi> vi it to lla* Kiemina
where, he told f-liiler, he ‘TeU nnr»c oi La, a, il ! * were ^/n n./ uki
Party comradesf’ Hitler, while nnpitved In d?e ah. assn o|
securing Russia’s ncwitialu^, w.H p.slHUa ua i\ i P m ot

Western intervention, lie was profour« L dn lopa.n • iln i le news from
London, instead of the fail of the Ch- mheilain ^LncrfimienL wLwIt he
had confidently anticipated, there c^uie reports * I Lunk and

Halifax’s speeches in ParliainenU PifUjaLs cw iniaaPoa

to stand by her obligations. Despik Rih^vulropL m \Lsn»\\.

and his claim that this would pul an cnO to any tlunn- nl of IL-Uam aiKi
France intervening, Hiller found liun^Jf ai.c.l wjih llie •aiiia viyLh mu
problem that had confronted lain eJI flu* summci fht relowtl o! the
British and French to lane him a free hand m I . \nn I «Ui>|V He lia«i
first looked to the passage < f time and shdiul prop tikla to solve tin ,
problem for him, belicvingithat in uiiic the British .md I ^ encli would I
intciest in Poland, particuLuh it the ivaiw* vejc pi^wnt/d to them a>
simply that of Danzig and its return lo the Reah When these hopci
proved to be unfounded, he had 1 ft) the i nwly^ion of iLe Fast
with Russia to produce a * d o* pidiLy, not tau> m XL ^vovv., but in
London and Paris as Now tia» .pneared to have Ij led.

At this stage Hiller never serioind) ci^nsideied a negotiated setlleiiieiit
with Poland. On that issue his mind was made up cither the Pi4w

^Tiic news ot ihc Pact led to the Kill oi the lapa*e 4 Uoviuauiia ai d tii dtiire
Japanese protests in Berlin

4^7

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

capitulated unconditionally under threat of force, or lie would attack.
Hitler wanted war — ^but only a localized war. To secure that he now
prepared to make one last bid to separate the British and French from
the Poles. This was his aim throughout the few remaining days of peace:
the attempt not to find an alternative to war, but to limit its risks and to
confine it to Poland. The possibility of renewing negotiations with the
Poles aiose only as part of the tactics of confusing the Western Powers
and driving a wedge between them and the Poles. To begin with Hitler
did not consider it necessary to make even so much as a gesture, or indeed
to modify the time-table already fixed for the invasion at dawn on the
26th.

This last approach to London and Pans was made by two separate
means. The first — the initiative for which came from Goermg, not
Hitler — was the dispatch of an unofiicial envoy to sound out the British
by the back dooi On the morning of the 25th Er. Birger Dahlerus, a
Swedish friend of Goenng’s, who had brought about a meeting between
Goermg and a group of English business men earlier in the month, left
by plane for London and saw Lord Halifax later that afternoon
Unaware of Haler’s determination to enforce his will on the Poles—
—even, m the last resort, at the risk of a general war— Heir Dahlerus
believed his mission to be that of finding some means to avert war and
acted m all good fdilh What he took to London, however, was no new
offer for a solution of the crisis over Poland, but simply an assurance of
Hitler’s willingness to come to an agreement with England.

At the same time Hitler proposed to make a more direct approach
through the Bunsh and French Ambassadors His first task on the
morning of the 25lh wjs to dispatch a long and somewhat embarrassed
letter to Mussolini, with a tardy explanation of the negotiations in
Moscow and assuiances that the Pact with Russia could only strengthen
the Axis. The end of the letter suggested that war was imminent: “No
one can say vliat the next houi may bring ... I can assure you, Duce,
that in a similar situation I would have complete understanding for Italy,
and that in any such case you can be suie of my attitude.”^ The letter
sent off, Hitler summoned the British Ambassador to the Reich Chan-
cellei y for half past one.

In a wholly different mood from that in which he had greeted Hender-
son at Eeichtesgaden forty-eight hours before, Hitler began by recalkng
Henderson’s hope, expressed at the end of their last conversation, that
an understanding between Biitain and Geimany might still be possible.

^ Nazi-SoMet Relations, pages 80-1.

488

HU 1 i k' > V. * If , I ;

He had also (he said) been m prcr.d ’ du , B **

Prime Minister and Foreign MmMci m K * i t. f
“Aflei turning things o\ei in mind i . re i e ^ ^
mo\e as regards England vshich ui In a . < »

ill regaid to Russia, the result oi a> f i hid
Chamberlaiifs speech could luH alKc^ I m

one tola, Bui Hiller spoke v^ith ♦ i ni'^ <

seemed the British altitude mud a s ^eafkl.

After naming certain conuiii ns li.. c n - ' H »

many’s colonial demands, the pic.er'ai « I 1 , . i ^ w u <■

and his ref list! ever to elites i ^ ® ^ i< ( IE * »

then made his ortcr a Oei. \ui juar ake ^ M v ^ .a 't s
Empire, with the assurance oi Ctcinur a i i <% or . . < v c.

such assistance might be required V» uh ;lu ^ j;e c t . \ im ^ le

accept a leasooable limaalion ui armauk H, and n tkddd id i
western frontiers as final ^

Hitler added a few more chauatctisuc t m '‘ihil Ik . f h
nature an artist not a p iUiiiaik and inai o^ se i c P > j ( i - * ; . s

settled he would end hu file as tn ar hi icd la i u ' ki i ’ it

he did not want to turn (.icrmans into isut.a . ' j 3 .

that once the Polish question was ‘■c. .u he 1 ai ait i *,

and so on But these did not anei me c-^LiUki i uk oi>„ , ^ k!k

reduced to simple terms was a blit . in reiafH i T ‘u w. ^ \u \ 1 irwjj
while he strangled Poland in Huler own i Sj ii u \\> % d'. / K an

exact parallel to the bribe wl iin lie h td oi: u . Malm h ^

days before. The one conciuiui was a net Lria o.er Pi it i v\ .

Hendcison tried to bring Folaid busk in! ; !’ ac n * c a

'The British Govenimeni could lot v m adu m ah . ^ ^ c oa

at the same time a ps^aeefu! settlea ei l mI.i Po ] Ihi I mi

Tf you thmk it u>dess, then do not cm; a\ m it I m
Henderson agiecd to transiait the oiler io Lu i I ai him a r
spareno limeandofTeringto put a (term.* j p/ui v .1 lu ‘

could fly to London *ind add pc rs(n 1 repie ink ki ' tolIiJ.i r t

No soonei had Hendcison leU Ifun little w it b i n. 1 d m kih .a d
at three o'clock coidumid the loi . le 11. h i 1 i ii Hi

into Poland the following \m rning ai d m 1 I ne ‘ sotiki he m i lai

proof that Hitler intended the idle I M h ui va 1 b\ ile dui mi ? .h a
a means of averting Bntuh mtci\ention.

^German Mmulc, Sttond Citrnisn \Sii u B -lu '' < * Hi! U . B' G

No 68

" Sir N lltikki^on to \ isvouiit Hahfas, Huti n Ba c Bt t Nr^ f

L H.— 0*^ ^

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Hitler, however, had still two more visitors to receive that afternoon,
le first was Attolico, the Italian Ambassador, from whom he was
pecting a reply to the letter he had sent Mussolini earlier in the day.
'hen he learned that no reply had yet reached Berlin he showed keen
sappointment, and sent Ribbentrop to telephone Ciano.

At half past five the French Ambassador, Coulondre, arrived. In the
ise of France, Hitler had no such offer to make as with Britain, but
ice again he insisted upon his belief that there was no issue between
ranee and Germany which could justify shedding the blood of “two
liially courageous peoples.” “I say again, it is painful to me to think
e might come to that. . . . But the decision does not rest with me.
lease tell this to M. Daladier.”^

At this point the exact sequence of events is not clear. Either just
ffore, or just after, the interview with Coulondre a message was
-ought in to Hitler announcing the signature in London of the Pact of
lutual Assistance between Britain and Poland. Schmidt says it was
sfore Coulondre arrived, and this would explain Hitler’s anxiety,
hich Coulondre as well as Schmidt noticed, to cut the interview short,
/henever it arrived it was a piece of news which was bound to make a
larp impression on Hitler. The final signature of the Agreement had
sen held up for months by one delay or another : the fact that it should
5 Signed on this very day, after Hitler had made his final offer to Great
ntain, and on the eve of war, was the clearest possible answer the
ritish Government could give to his attempts to detach them from the
olish side.

The news from London was followed by a second piece of news of
ill greater importance, this time from Rome. Hitler’s message of the
lorning of the 25th, with its hint of imminent action against Poland,
ad found Mussolini still m a state of painful hesitation. On his return
■om Berchlesgaden, twelve days before, Ciano had urged on the Duce
le need to recover his independence of Germany, while there was still
me. “The Duce’s reactions,” he noted m his Diary, “are varied. At
rst he agrees with me. Then he says that honour compels him to march
nth Germany. Finally, he states that he wants his share of the booty in
'roatia and Dalmatia.”-

On the 18th Ciano records. “A conversation with the Duce his usual
lifting feelings. He still thinks it possible that the democracies will not
larch, and that Germany might do good business cheaply, from which
usiness he does not want to be excluded. Then, too, he fears Hitler’s

^ M. Coulondre to M. Bonnet, 25 August, 1939, French Yellow Book, No. 242.

“ Ciano’s Diary, page 125.

490

HI I llr\ w \\f

rage. He believes that a denuncialion ui the ? .v : i e

Hitler to abandon the Polidi quc.Uon m uoi.: i,? fe ' i i ^ i
Italy. This makes Iiim nervous and disturbed.

The Pact with Russia gtcalK impressed hodi « t i.os

and the Diice swung back to Ins p* htlhgeipf ' i? - l . evo
Mussolini could not ignore the poo: siaie ui the I: ou \ ^ * d ij

lack of preparations for a major war hir.ad), fjc pev '' . -

to break with Hitler, at least to dccimc to go to vuu a d/ ea * 1 ..
was the message which Attoiicii now brum: i lo the Reseii LI .u ^eue,
shortly after Coulondre had left.

After expressing his au^MtcUon at the .r .v.l Ruiaa

Mussolini wrote:

As for the pratiica! posiiion of Halv, in v i e o! . m d c n ^ 'n r , f
of view IS as follow^: IfCieimuiv atiack" P. land, uid the ci jtg, ^ ^ ui d
localized, Italy will afford Gcniun> evti> form (Tp, I aiHi li
assistance which IS requested. It G^nnaii) attatk^aru; Polaaa .Al ^ ^opt p 4
counter-attack aga.ost Gernvny, 1 \o n to w.aa vou liow that it iusal i i\
better if I did not take the miiianie m nnhuu} 1 ' ui tliv

present Situation of Italian war pieptiuu onx ...On imti o**’ nu fio h
ever, take place at once it Gcrman> iki vco to jn sch. A * . ^ aa in filar^
supplies and the raw matenaK to res a the at . ck ’An»d< !ii' I eskfi an.
English would direct against us.

By way of defending his decision. Mus'^ohni awk ' \l utyr meetings
the war was envisaged for alter 1942 and at s' ch Hi I woiik! h au hecii
ready on land, on sea and in the air aevi luing tu our ai^reeJ pi u>, ''
But for the moment, Italy would nui ma*di
After the way ht had treated the lialiaiisand his ictusa! lu fake l!u r
into his confidence Hitler had little reasem to 1 e \urp' o :d at \f n '♦aihaf ^
reply, but, coming iinmedi after the iroiu i u* dun, clicvi
was to plunge him once more mlo urvCHairl) \s bchnmll shinvcdi
Attolico out of the Chancellery he parsed hunving m to

Hitler, and when he met him on his w.iy back lit nrard* I he general
excitedly instructing his adjutant with the wurdv. I lie oul. 1 to adv.rHi
must be delayed again.’' Less than twvive hours hefaic /ciodioiir
invasion was halted. The entry m the Gennan Admuraliv R. is
followed by the reason: ‘'Mutual Assonance Past between isie.fi BriUnu
and Poland, and information fiom th. Dnc^ lhal he wouk! Iv true
his word, but lias to ask for large supfdas ot raw maiciial »

^ pare i2S.

-Hitler e Mmsoimu Lvtieic e Ouamiui^ IMiUk, PHn ^ tiuiu.iUo
Dommetit% on Int.^hotumai itjaus, /v^j, Visj. I, \\i .

® Schmidt, page 4^3

49 !

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Up to the evening of 25 August it is possible to follow Hitler’s in-
tentions with some degree of assurance But in the six days that follow
before the invasion of Poland on 1 September the German side of the
picture becomes exasperatmgly obscure. Even those like Weizsacker,
Ribbentrop’s State Secretary, or Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter,
who were present at many of the discussions and interviews, confess
that they were no longer able to follow what was going on.

Hitler’s sudden hesitation on receiving the news from London and
Rome did not last long. By 28 August, possibly earlier, he had restored
the decision to invade Poland, with 4.45 a m. on Friday, September,
as zero-hour^ He used the interval for fresh efforts to secure the
neutrality of the Western Powers. To give himself more time for this was
almost certainly one of the reasons which led him to postpone the
attack. At Nuremberg, Goering recalled: “When the Fuehrer called me
on the telephone and told me that he had stopped the planned invasion
of Poland, I asked him whether this was just temporary or for good.
He said: ‘No, I will have to see whether we can eliminate British
intervention.’

The question then arose how long Hitler was prepared to wait and
how far he was prepared to go in making concessions — at least on paper
— m order to accomplish this. The answer to this question appears to
have been a matter of fierce dispute between the Nazi leaders, on which
no clear decision was taken right up to the end of the negotiations. Here
is the first source of uncertainty in interpreting the documents, since at
no time is it possible to be certain how seriously Hitler took his own
offers.

Goermg had another purpose m mind — and this is a second cause of
confusion. Unlike Hitler, Goermg was not at all eager for war, even for
a local war. He prefeired a dictated settlement in which Britain and
France should take the responsibility of forcing the Poles to accept
demands imposed by Germany under the threat of force. Hitler’s
inclination was still towards the actual use of force, as it had been in
September, 1938, he was eager to put his new Army to the test. At
times during this last week, he was prepared to listen to Goermg’s
argument, and seems not to have excluded the alternative of British and
French intervention to secure his demands for him, without a war. But,
^ Goeiing’s Interrogation, 29 August, 1945, N,D. TC-90,

492

1 '' ^

" *

finnr/s u vk.

again, iiis purpose was fiili}! and it U n a' '
to negotiate with the Poles, e\en on * e
terms, was ever meant a^ more tlian a m<*.noc owe » " ' ?*

from the Poles, or an alibi with Ws iJi n> mO j ^ ^ , 'mo

for self-justification.

A third factor complicaiing the history ol a s L. .m m .
was the rivalry between Goermg and Rndje?''* ^ p \ n ‘ .r
1938, the Foreign Minister was a\3a tor Wo’. ..c i, - .v,

British and Fiench }ntcT\e!iiio‘n on Po' \:u\\ » ih* \w. m . i ‘
w^ould never be more than numiiial His mllu ’’ v , . • s > v i e.usi

to preventing the resumption of ikviei wn ^ ni F , w . ", i
dictated settlement such as Goerin^ hoMi to p H w j . o ' «
approach to London throiign D ihici, IS a. i..i c, whv » i eiu o. *. mm
prercgatucs and did his best to ee that it duojld khK

Hitler's own altitude delics aaai^M's He m i* M r is m
strength of the opposition he had encountered, seuviu:: a ^

point, trying to gauge how far he could uo, c.^Mrr ' r\ ; . s’
that turned up, but refusing h) coinmu him lb o,fpj nu? f •: .i-*

instinctive way of conduclipg alTasi ^ cU Nlau* - o boi: J : " ,

number of false starts and loose eiwi^ At ewe:^ l\ -

1932mn June, 1934, in September, l‘)38, ammwh on r*H' he iidt 'hi'O
it ditlicult to make up his mind, hesitaisng. iislemm: 1 * < lo iheii to

another, argument, waiting for some ^nddea imp d e !o ^ e.i Ps'**

ward. In the hcct^c, overwrought almo^phe'C of me I . .n C l >

in the last days of August half the decision niadic ho m i to
incoherent and contradictory. Hide^'N coua"',ui n> wi d Host.*
and Dahierus show him constantly talking m the w lec'i t I

German Press stones of atrocities comaiMted cm me i h u 'o ti.i*
— particularly, it was noted, report'^ o! Cvc'vc.j vi -r .m, i |lou ; i
pitch of barely controlled excitement. Snoai:: atid w.o*' o
he poured out a stream ol words m which wcninum ^m. s ‘ pi u
tion, deliberate misrepresentation and gr^ftesqae cv.gacf Or*?} v * dj
jumbled together. It may well be a miaakc, ni such viwiin a j
try to make too much sense of all that wa> sau' audi done lu d c J

The negotiations conducted between the pt5.q>* 'leiumu 'U', ad ms
on 25 August and the insasion of PoLind on the I '* eje^/aaber

fall into three groups those with Rome, tliime widi im, a« 3 v! luoa*
with London. Of Ihc'-e, the last, winch itui'Kcd a dauldc eppruach,
officially through the British Fmhas>y and iinof.ici t!!\ llirouga fIeM“
Dahierus, are by ffir the most impoiianl it is noUViudiy lhai au sciuhis

4V3

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

attempt was made by the Germans to renew the talks with the Poles
which had remained in abeyance since the spring.

First, the exchanges with Rome and Paris, which can be summarized
very briefly.

Flitler’s immediate reply to Mussolini had been to ask him v/hat he
needed to complete his preparations, in order to see whether Germany
could supply the deficiencies. The Italian answer was such as to rule out
any hope of this. After helping to draw up the list of Italy’s needs, Ciano
wrote: “It’s enough to kill a bull — if a bull could read it.”^ Hitler there-
upon contented himself with three requests to Mussohni: support for
Germany in the Italian Press and radio; the immobilization of as large
English and French forces as possible; and, as a great favour, Italian
manpower for industrial and agricultural work.

The tone of Hitler’s letter was resigned, but did not conceal his dis-
appointment. “Duce,” he wrote, “I respect the motives and influences
determining your resolution. Perhaps it will nevertheless be for the best.
Of course, this will be true only if the world does not receive any inkling
of the intended attitude of Italy, at least not till the actual fighting
starts.”^

The Duce, Ciano reports, was beside himself at the poor figure he was
obliged to cut. In the hope of saving face he revived his suggestion of a
conference, and a settlement by negotiation. At the last moment, on the
evening of 31 August, Mussolini himself offered to mediate. Hitler
thanked Mussolini for his trouble but declined to be drawn. To Attolico
he said that he was “not m the mood to be slapped m the face time and
again by Poland, and does not want to bring the Duce into an uncom-
fortable position through acceptance of his mediation. ... To the ques-
tion of Attolico whether herewith everything is at an end, the Fuehrer
answered yes.”^ There was no open breach between the Axis partners,
but liitler refused to alter his plans in order to save Mussolini’s reputa-
tion. The Pact of Steel had failed to provide the support he had ex-
pected, he was not going to let it act as a brake.

Apart from a letter to Daladier, m which he repeated with con-
siderable skill the argument that Danzig and Poland did not represent a
sufficient issue to jusiiiy war between France and Germany, Hitler paid
little attention to France in the final stages of the ciisis. Coulondre,
indeed, did not see the Chancellor again after the 26th, until he presented

’ The Italian demands included 6 million tons of coal, 2 million tons of steel,
7 million tons of oil, 1 million tons of timber, and 150 A A batteries.

^ Hitler to Mussolini, 27 August, 1939 Hitler e Mussolini, No 7.

^ German Minute of Hitler’s talk with AUtolico at 7 p.m., 31 August, 1939: N.D
1889-PS.

494

HiFLIU’; W\R, 19^9

the French ultimatum on the evening of I Strtcmh.Y. HiIVt
correctly, that u was on London that c\ei>lhmg .'nd il.j

French Government, with M, Bonnet still at the iv!u/i,;rv I orei/ .
Affairs, were glad enough, as at the time of Munich, kn\e !hc .hiJ
responsibility to the British, a tacit confession of the mkvls 11/ k] .a :
achieved m weakening French unity.

Despite his remark to Goenng that lie must try ?o elmuiLitc Ih o
intervention, Hiller took no fresh initiaihe in iIun d/. upp, -enU}
waiting to see what would be the reaction in hop !o,i in. i/n ; ^ i die
25th and the visits of Henderson and DaUlci'U'. * ^ K uJon.

On the evening of the 26th Dahlcrus returned, w/h !«rj

letter which he had persuaded Lord Halifaxlo to Cnjenr/’ i, xp-e .
ing Britain’s desire for peace and wish to come to dit louicrstaf'/u y
with Germany. The letter has never been published, „nd appear . lu iui\
been written in the most general and non-eonrait/*^ ten u \- *e doe
less, when Dahlerus read it to Goenng. whom he found on fir- vru oe
train en route for his headquarters outside Beriin, liic i ieldALjihft
declared it to be of enormous importance and dro\e back h* llei Ln vvidi
Dahlerus to see Hitler. When they reached the Ghanceller} at iroduiplit
the building was in darkness and Hitler in bed, hut Goeriim msisttsl m
waking him up. Dahlerus, kept waiting in an arttc-roop'f, h nl tun: lo
notice the exquisite carpets — always a weakness of ilnIcF'*- and the
masses of orchids. Then he was shown in.

Entirely ignoring the letter Dahlerus had hiiuigh! from I oiidoiu
Hitler began with a twenty-minute lecture justif>i!»g German pt»!iL\ and
criticizing the British. After that he spent halt an hour eai'c;!> c|iicslu n-
ing Dahlerus about the years he had passed in Englami. Out} tiku dui
he return to the current crisis, becoming more and more
up and dowm and boasting of the armed pow^er he had crcaUnl, a piiwei
unequalled m German history.

When Hitler had finished Dahlerus got his diance to say '.imielluiif
Hitler listened without inteiiuptmg me ... bat then suddc aot up,
becoming very excited and neivous, walked up and down sa>iii i, a.s ihod'h
to himself, that Germany was irresistible. - . . SuJdcnb he iri die

nuddle of the room and stood there staring. His wuce was thi icJ, and lu
behaviour that of a completely abnormal person. He spoke siaecaJu
phrases: “If there should be war, then I shall biuld U-boats, hii Id U-hoais,
U-boats, U-boats, U-boats.” bbs voice became inoie nultdiuet and iinatlv
one could not fodow him at alLTheti he pulled hiimctf to-elhci, larcd hu
voice as though addiessing a large audience and shrieked: “I shall biiiU
aeroplanes, build aeroplanes, aeroplanes, t^ei (planes, and f shall aiiiiiliiLue

495

CHANCELLOK, 1933-1939

oiy enemies/’ He seemed more like a phantom from a sioiy-book than a

real person. I stared at him in amazement and turned to see how Goermg

was reacting, but he did not turn a hair.

A little later Hitler walked up to Dahlerus and said: “Herr Dahlerus,
you who know England so well, can you give me any reason for my
perpetual failure to come to an agreement with her?’’ When Dahlerus
leplied, with some diffidence, that it was the English people’s lack of
confidence in Hitler personally and in his regime, “Hitler flung out his
right arm, striking his breast with his left hand, and exclaimed: ‘Idiots,
have I ever told a lie in my life?’ ”

The upshot of the meeting was that Dahlerus agreed to return to
London with a new offer from Hitler to the British Government. It
comprised six points:

(1) Germany wanted a pact or alliance with Britain.

(2) England was to help Geimany to obtain Danzig and the Corridor, but
Poland was to have a free harbour in Danzig, to retain Gdynia and a
corridor to it.

(3) Geimany would guarantee the Polish frontiers.

(4) Germany was to have her colonies, or their equivalent, returned to her.

(5) Guarantees weie to be given for the German minority m Poland.

(6) Germany was to pledge herself to defend the British Empire.

Dahlerus was not allowed to write these points down, but both Hitler
and Goering appeared to attach a great deal of importance to the
message he was to take. When Dahlerus asked what Hitler claimed in
the Corridor, Goering tore a page out of an atlas and drew in the lines
with a red pencil Such was the way in which affairs of State were con-
ducted under the Third Reich ’•

Dahlerus reached London again just after midday on Sunday the 27 di,
and was at once taken, by a roundabout route, to No 10 Downing
Street. The Biitish Government had now two different sets of pioposals
before them, the first the offer Hitler had made to Henderson on the
25 ih, to which no reply had yet been sent, and the second, that now
brought by Dahlerus, There were considerable differences between the
two, notably the prominent place assigned to a settlement of the
German-Polish problem in the second, after its virtual exclusion from
the first. The circumstances in which the proposals had been thrown
together, however, and Dahlerus’s account of Hitler’s state of mind,
made the British Government extremely sceptical as to their value.
Finally it was agreed that Dahlerus should return to Berlin at once with

^The whole of this account is based upon Bnger Dahlerus: The Last Attempt
(London, 1948), chapter VI

496

hitler’s war, 1939

a leply to the second offer, and report on us leccpiiun by H:*!cr, h.-f. n*

the official reply to the first offc: was drafted and sent mt-i b> H.-rde;,

on the 28th.

So, once again, Dahlerus flew back to Berlin, and dlic:
o’clock on the Sunday niglil delivered the BntisL (jtnernnicnf's Ui:
to Goering. In principle the British wcie willing to come to aa a-. , i
with Germany, but they stood by their guarantee io hoi mci . tiie> ! ett a:
mended direct negotiations between German) and Fokiad tu
questions of frontiers and minorities, stipulating ihai iLe icadN.
have to be guaranteed by ali the European luaf ,, aphv lr,

Germany; they rejected the return ol colonies at tou time, emJer lliieui
of war, though not indefinitely; and they emphaticarg. dewtrxd d.. . ihn
to defend the British Empire. Goering at once went i If lo Hiller, ifi*
time alone. To Dahlerus’s surprise, and also tu Goerm'^N, Ih'Lv
accepted the British terms. Provided the olncial Bniidi rcplv uifie-
sponded with liis report, there was no reason, Goeang U*!d f)a!iLria,
to suppose that an agreement could i:o< be reached, Dahlerus rat the
British Charg6 d’ Affaires out of bed at 2 a m. and sent an accinmi ol l:i »
reception off to London. Everything now depended ap*vi the me>iae:
Henderson would bring, but Goering at least was optiinKtic ilwt wai
could still be avoided.

Sir Nevile Henderson flew back to Berlin the same evening, Moiida)
the 28th, and was received in slate, with a guard of honour ,rul a ro!!
of drums, when he presented himself at the Chancellen at imSI pa .1 ten
o’clock. Despite further outbursts on Hitler’s pait agam4 the Poles, ifie
interview was conducted m a reasonable manner. The ollkni lep!)
which Hendeison brought with him confirmeu ilie repi^rl whioh Dah-
lerus had given, but it made perfectly clear that ‘‘c\er} thing Uifu ^ upm
the nature of the selilement with PoLmd and the method bv wliicli d is
1 cached.” The British politely declined HitlcrA bnhc: '' 1 liw is add iiv.f,
for any advantage offered to Great Bnlain, a* piicsce jii a tCiilenkiii
which put in jeopardy ihc independence oi a Slate to whom tiK\ laue
given their guarantee.” Britain would maintain lici tu

Poland, and must, in any ca»e, insist that an) HMlcmeiil arnvs! at
should be-guaranteed by the other Euiopcan Powem a» well tis o) i jici-
many. ‘In the view of H M. Government, it folknvs that tlic ne\l ‘V.ep
should be the initiation of direct discussions bctw,\‘’u aie Ci iniaii and
Polish Governments.”^ The Butish Government liad alit\ul> secured
the agieemenl of the Polish Government to such ciscassioos: dicy
^ Text of the reply in British Blue Book, Nu. ’^•1.

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

asked the German Government if they too v/ere prepared to negotiate.

For the moment Hitler gave no reply, but promised one on the
following day, Tuesday, 29 August, after he had talked matters over
with Ribbentrop and Goermg.

The reason for the delay is not difhcult to see. Had Hitler wanted to
avoid war there can be little question that the British reply offered him
a clear opportunity. But this had not been Hitler’s purpose in making
his offer to Great Britain. What he wanted was a free hand to deal with
the Poles in a localized war. Russia had agreed to this, in return for
German guarantees of her private interests: why should not Britain
accept a similar arrangement? But the British, unlike the Russians, who
had asked no awkward questions about Hitler’s intentions towards the
Poles, obstinately persisted in pushing a settlement between Germany
and Poland into the front of the picture, and making this a condition of
any Anglo-German agreement. Hitler had now to decide how far he
was prepared to go m humouring the British by a show of willingness to
negotiate with the Poles.

Ribbentrop’s view was straightforward: he urged Hitler to take the
risk of Britain intervening and to attack. Even if Britain and France
declared war, in order to save face, once Poland was overrun they would
accept the jait accompli and condone Hitler’s action. Goering, more
impressed than Ribbentrop by the advantages of an agreement with
Great Britain, was prepared to go further, although not even Goering
thought m terms of anything other than Poland accepting the German
demands. Goering cared little for the Poles, but, as he told Dahlerus,
he regarded the questions to be settled with Poland as a bagatelle when
weighed against the prospects of an understanding between Germany
and England.

Characteristically, Hitler toed to get the best of both courses. In his
reply he made a great show of the lengths to which he was ready to go
to please England, but imposed such conditions for the talks with the
Poles urged on him by the British that it was virtually certain nothing
would come of his concessions. The German Note, handed to Hender-
son at 7 15 p.m on 29 August began with a lengthy indictment of the
Poles, their refusal of the German demands, the provocation and
threats they had since offeied to Germany, and their persecution of the
German minority — a state of aftairs intolerable to a Great Power. All
this was skilfully used to heighten the effect of the concession Hitler was
leady to make in order to win Britain over.

Though sceptical as to the prospects of a successful outcome [of direct tafc

with the Poles], the German Government aie nevertheless prepared to accept

498

hitler’s war, 1939

the English proposal and to enter into diiect di’^cus»ions . . . soleh a«» 4
result of the impression made upon them by the written >ULni€m rcltned
from the British Government that they too desire a pact of friuidship. . . .

The German Government, accordingly, m these c iciinisiances
to accept the British Government’s offer of their good olliccs in secu? ijik
dispatch to Berlin of a Polish emissary with fall powers. Tlie> omnt on thj
arrival of this Emissary on Wednesday, 30 August.^

The catch was in the last two lines: the Polish emissa-y to
at once and reach Berlin the following day— and he was to or'*;
provided with full powers. If the Poles accepted, it meant tapitulaliom
To send a plenipotentiary to Berlin, with full power" to the

Polish Government, was to invite a repetition of wlral had happ. .vd !o
the Austrian Chancellor, Schuschnigg, and to PKOcitni Haclia. Btii if
the Poles refused, Hitler hoped, the British and French might conic lo
regard them m the same light as Benes and the Czechs the year hetdre,
as the sole obstacles to a peaceful settlement, which Geimany was iffily
too eager to sign. After all, was Danzig w'orth a war?

It was a clever trick, but it no longer took in the aatiicnce. Mr.
Chamberlain had already answered Hiller five days before:

If, in spite of all, we find ourselves foiced to embuik upon a Mruggic . , . we
shall not be fighting for the political future of a far-awa> Cit> iii a loaCiWi
land; we shall be figliting for the picscrvation of those pnnc.pItN, taj
destruction of which would involve the destruction of all possibility ot‘ peace
and security for the peoples of the world.^

There was an echo, perhaps unconscious, in ChamberlairiX \v«^fds of
his famous broadcast before Munich:

How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be i!»ggin« lanchcs
and trying on gas-masks hero, because of a quarrel in a fai-aw,iy aninto
between people of whom we know nothing.’*

But that was a year ago: since then Hitler had taught liie \\e>rld a I'ood
deal, and Mr. Chambeiiain was not t‘ic anl> one tu
This time the British Government did not fall into the bap. Althoiigli
they continued to work for negotiations bdwven Geriiuriy and ikiland
and to urge this course in Warsaw, they declined to put pivssiav la. the
Poles to comply with Hiller’s demand lor a plenipoici !:ar> wiliiiii
twenty-four hours, a condition which they dcscnbed us w hid!} iiiii cason*
able. A last attempt by Goenng to inilueiKc the Briush by sendiiig
Dahierus to London on the 30th failed to alkr the auuaii* m i )ricc agaifi

1 Geiman Note; British Blue Book, No. 78. . » . 1 m ^ ,

2 Chamberlain’s Speech in the House ot Commons, ^4 August; ihmsli Bliic
No. 64.

^ Chamberlain’s broadcast of 27 September, 193d.

499

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

Goering tore a map out of an atlas and sketched in Germany’s demands
in the most haphazard way; once again he laid stress upon Germany’s
desire for a settlement with Britain. But Mr. Chamberlain and Lord
Halifax, though deeply troubled, held to the view they had expressed
in their Note of 28 August, that the prerequisite of an agreement
between Germany and Great Britain was a settlement between Germany
and Poland and that ‘‘everything turns upon the nature of the settlement
and the method by which it is reached.”

During the course of Wednesday, the 30th, a precise statement of the
German claims against Poland was for the first time drawn up under
sixteen heads. It included the return of Danzig; a plebiscite, under
international control, on the Corridor; extra-territorial communications
between Germany and East Prussia, and between Poland and Gdynia;
an exchange of populations, and the guarantee of minority rights. This
might have been of some importance, for Hitler had taken care hitherto
to avoid committing himself, and there were wide variations between the
different versions of the German demands, the most recent of which was
Goering’s impromptu sketch on the page torn from his atlas. But it was
a statement drawn up with an eye to propaganda, not to diplomacy.
Hitler himself later said in Schmidt’s presence: “I needed an alibi,
especially with the German people, to show them that I had done every-
thing to maintain peace. That explains my generous offer about the
settlement of Danzig and the Corridor.”^

Whatever chance the statement had of being taken seriously was
deliberately killed by Ribbentrop v/hen he saw Henderson at midnight
on the night of 30-31 August. In an interview, during which both men
lost their tempers and shouted at each other, Ribbentrop read through
the Sixteen Points drawn up earlier m the day, but refused to give the
British Ambassador the text on the grounds that the time-limit for the
appearance of a Polish plenipotentiary was up, and that the proposals
were therefore out of dale. Ribbentrop could scarcely have demon-
strated more blatantly his desire to see the negotiations come to nothing
Even the suggestion that he should place the Points in the hands of the
Polish Ambassador was rejected.

Through Dahlerus, Goering was prevailed on to provide the text of
the Sixteen Points surreptitiously, and this Henderson passed on to
Lipski, the Polish Ambassador, with an urgent recommendation to call
on Ribbentrop and at least try to start negotiations. Later on the 3ist
the Polish Government, pressed by the British, instructed Lipski to seek

^ Schmidt * page 460.

500

hitler's war, 1939

an interview with Ribbentrop, and after some difficulty he \uis leceived
by the German Foreign Minister at half past six in the evening fhe
Polish Government had shown great patience under pioxuc.iium imd
had never refused to discuss a settlement. But they were not prepared
to accept German dictation, and Lipski’s instructions were dniph to
inform the Germans that the British suggestion of direct
was being favourably considered by the Polish Governnicnl, and ihal
they would send a reply in a few hours Ribbentrop was it 4 interested.
Since Lipski had not come with plenipotentiary powers to accept I lie
German proposals, the Foreign Minister brusquely informed him {here
w^as no further point in talking and ended the interview.

There is an unreal atmosphere about all these c!e\enfli-hoar nego-
tiations, an air of urgent futility in the telegrams passing between
London and Warsaw, Berlin and London, London and Paris, Pari^ and
Rome. Even at the time those who were engaged in these diplomaiic
activities found it difficult to believe that they had any point. As m a
badly managed play, anticlimax had preceded the denouemen!, and there
was only rehef when the curtain finally came down.

There was not much longer to wait. The High Cmnmand id'ihe Arni}
was pressing Hitler for a decuion one way or the other. Thej' had Hitle
doubt what the decision would be. On 29 August Haider, the duel id*
the General Staff, wrote in his diary: 'The Poles will conic ti) Berlin
on 30 August. On 31 August the negotiations will blow up. Oo 1 Sep-
tember we start to use force." The Poles did not come to Bcrlis: a tier itii,
but the date was right. Half an hour after noon, on Tfiursdax, 3 1 Aisgust,
Hiller signed “Directive Ho. 1 for the Conduct of the War."

Every preparation was complete, even down to the nccessarv
“incidents " Since 10 August one of HeydnclPs S.S. men, Haujicks, hail
been waiting at Gleiwitz, near the Polish frontlei, in order to Htage a
faked Polish attack on the German radio station there. At Dppefn lie gol
in touch with the head of the Gestapo, Muellei, “MuellerA Naiijijck.
explained in an affidavit taken after the war, “hud twelve or ihirteen
condemned criminals who were to be dre:»sed m Fiiltsh uiaS'»niis and
left dead on the grounds For this purpose they were to be given latai
injections by a doctor employed by Heydnch^ Then tficy wcie to be
given gunshot wounds. After the incident, members ot the Prc*^s and
other persons were to be taken to the scene of the incident ^ At h p.iti.
on 31 August Naiijccks picked up one of these mem a!icady uncon-
scious, near the Gleiwitz radio station, seized the slalioii as fie liatl been
* Naujocks’ Affidavit, N.D.

501

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

ordered, bioadcast a short proclamation and fired a few pistol shots
leaving the body behind. Naujocks’ story is confirmed by Genera
Lahousen, of the Abwehr, the German Counter-Intelhgence, whose jot
it was to provide the Polish uniforms. The ‘‘attack’’ on Gleiwitz was
one of the Polish infringements of German territory cited by the Ger
mans as the justification for their attack the next day.

While these “incidents” were being staged on the frontier, at nine
o’clock on the Thursday night, the Beilin radio broadcast the Sixteer
Points of the German demands as proof of the moderation and patience
of the Fuehrer in face of intolerable provocation. The Poles were
represented as stubbornly refusing to undertake negotiations, and the
Sixteen Points as the German offer which had been “to ail intents anc
purposes rejected.” The use of the Points as an alibi now became clear
even a seasoned foreign correspondent like William Shirer admits thai
he was at first taken aback by their reasonableness.

Away to the east of Berlin, tanks, guns, lorries and division aftei
division of troops were moving up the roads towards the Polish frontiei
all through the night. It was a beautiful, clear night. At dawn on 1 Sep
tember, the precise date fixed in the Fuehrer’s directive at the beginning
of April, the guns opened fire. Hitler had got his war. Not for five anc
a half years, until he was dead, were they to be silenced.

On 1 September, 1939, there were no scenes of enthusiasm, no cheermi
crowds in Berlin like those m Munich in which Hitler had heard th«
news of the declaration of war twenty-five years before. When he drove
to address the Reichstag at the Kroil Opera House at 10 a.m. the streets
were emptiei than usual. Most of those who turned to watch the line o^
cars accompanying the Fuehrer stared in silence.

Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag was on a characteristic note of trucu
lent self-defence. Not only was the whole blame for failure to reach i
peaceful settlement thrown on the Poles, but they were actually accusec
of launching an offensive against Germany, which compelled the Ger
mans to counter-attack.

For two whole days I sat with my Government and waited to see whethe
It was convenient foi the Polish Government to send a plenipotentiary o
not. . . . But I am wrongly judged if my love of peace and my patience ar
mistaken for weakness or even cowardne, ... I have, therefore, resolved h
speak to Poland in the same language that Poland for months past has usei
502

HITLER’S WAR, 1939

towards us. . . , This night for the first tune Polish regulars fired on our own
territory. Since 5.45 a.m. we have been returning the fire, and fioni now on
bombs Will be met with bombs.^

It was not one of Hitler’s best speeches. Ha made a great deal of the
Pact with Russia, but was uncertain in his attitude towards the Western
Powers, disclaiming any quarrel with France or Britain and insisting
on Ms desire for a final settlement with both. He was also clearly em-
barrassed by the need to refer to Italy. Towards the end he declared:
I am asking of no German man more than I myself was ready to do fhi i
out four years. There will be no hardships for Germans to wliicli I nivacff
will not submit. My whole life belongs henceforth more than ever to my
people. I am from now on just the first soldier of the German Reich, i have
once more put on that coat that was the most sacied and deai to me. I
will not take it off again until victory is secured, or I will not survive the out-
come.

He then announced that, if anything should happen to himself, Goeriiig
would be his successor, and after him, Hess.

The nomination of Goering was as much a purely personal decision
on Hitler’s part as the decision to attack Poland. No Cabinet had now
met for two years past, and anything that could be called a German
Government had ceased to exist. By assuming the right to name hu own
successor Hitlei demonstrated the arbitrary characicr of the rule winch
he exercised over Germany: this was to be intensified during the cxiiirsc
of the war which had now begun.

Shortly after Hitler’s return from the session of the Reichstag. Gocriiig
took Dahlerus to see him in the Chancellery. Goeiing was still inlercsled
in the possibility of a settlement with Great Britain, ami still lujpeful
of averting British intervention. They found Hiller alone in a sni Ji
room. “His calm,” Dahlerus writes, “was skin-deep, but I c^uld sec
that he was nervous and upset inside. He was obvious!) dtlciiiiineci
snatch at every argument, however far-fetched, that wimld scr\e to
absolve him personally for the decisions he had made.”

This lime Hitler’s self-justification took the form of reciinimalioiu
against Ihe British for their refusal to come to terms with liiiii.

He grew more and more exciled, and began to wave Ins aiio » as ne J
in my face: “If England wants to fight lor a year, I shall fight for a >eai , 1

England wants to tight two years, I shall fight two years “ f L* paused and

then yelled, his voice rising to a shrill scream and his arm * imliiiig witdlv:
“If England wants to fight for three years, I shall fight for tlirce years. . .

^ Text ir Adolf Hitlei : My New Older, edited by Rauul ue V( .?/ < > S iks i'S.Y ,

1941), pages 683-90.

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

The movements of his body now began to follow those of his arms, and when
he finally bellowed: ^'Und wenn es eifoiderlich ist, will ich zehn Jahre
kampfen^'^ he brandished his fist and bent down so that it nearly touched
the floor. The situation was highly embarrassing, so embarrassmg m fact
that Goermg reacted perceptibly to the spectacle Hitler was making of him-
self by turning on his heel so that he had his back to both of us.^

Despite his remark that he was prepared to meet the British halfway,
Hitler refused to make any concessions to avoid British and French
intervention. Mussolini’s attempts at mediation on 1 and 2 September
were politely, but definitely, declined. Hitler had still some hopes that
the British and French would in the end do nothing: these hopes were
encouraged by their delay in declaring war. Not until more than forty-
eight hours after the attack on Poland had begun did Poland’s allies
enter the war. When it became certain that the British and French meant
to honour their obligations to Poland, Plitler’s disappointment was
alleviated by the belief that their aid would remain purely nominal,
a belief he had already expressed to Weizsacker on 29 August — “In
two months Poland will be finished, and then we shall have a great
peace conference with the Western Powers.” ^

Flitler’s early directives for the war in the west bear out this view.
In his Directive No. 1, signed on 31 August, he wrote: “In the west
it is important that the responsibility for opening hostilities should
rest unequivocally with England and France. . . . Germany’s western
land frontier is not to be crossed at any point without my express con-
sent. The same applies at sea for all belligerent action.” Even if Great
Britain and France opened hostilities, the German forces were to stand
strictly on the defensive. “In any event, I reserve to myself the order to
launch attacking operations.”^

The British ultimatum was delivered by Sir Nevile Henderson at
nine o’clock on the niornmg of Sunday, 3 September Ribbentrop sent
Paul Schmidt, the interpreter, to act m his place, and it was Schmidt who
brought the message across to the Chancellery immediately after-
wards. Pushing through the crowd of Nazi leaders who filled the ante-
room, he entered the Fuehrer’s study.

Hitler was sitting at his desk and Ribbentop stood by the window. Both
looked up expectantly as I came in. I stopped at some distance from Hitler’s
desk, and then slowly translated the British Government’s ultimatum.
When I finished, there was complete silence.

^ “And, if necessary, I will fight for ten years.”

2 Birger Dahlerus: pages 1 19-20.

® Weizsacker: pages 208 and 214,

504

^N.D. C-126.

hitler’s war, 1939

Hitler sat immobUe, gazing before hm. He was not at a lo's,
afterwards stated, nor did he rage as others allege. He sat completely

and unmoving.

After an interval, which seemed an age, he turned to Ribbentrop, who had
remained standing by the window. “What now?” asked Hitler with a savagi
look, as though implying that his Foreign Minister had misled him ab.iar
England’s probable reaction.^

Ribbentrop’s only answer was to explain that they could now cMxvf
a French ultimatum.

Outside, in the ante-room, Schmidt’s news was also rcceiveil in ‘silence.
Goermg contented himself with the remark: ‘‘if wc lose war, Uien
God help us!” Goebbels stood apart, lost m his own thougliK and
saying nothing.

Hitler’s embarrassment was soon relieved by the remarkable pro-
gress of the German armies m Poland. This seems to ha\c been aliiio'4
the only campaign of the Second World War in which the Cjormafi
generals did not have to submit to Hitler’s direct interference. lhtlLT\
interest m what was happening, however, was so great that he al once
left Berlin for the Eastern Front. Before setting out he issued a Pm*
clamation to the German People in which he pointed to the Brithfi policy
of the Balance of Power and the encirclement of Geimany as the ulti-
mate causes of the war, but assured the German people that tins
time there would be no repetition of 1918.

Hitler established his headquarters m his special train near Gogohri
Every morning he set out by car to drive up to tlie front line. On lb
September, he moved to the luxurious Casino Hotel at ZoppeU, on the
Baltic, and from there made his triumphal entry into Dan/ig the follow-
ing day.

Despite the utmost bravery the Polish forces were o\erw helmed by
the speed and impetus of the German armoured and imHi^n/ed divi-
sions, supported by an air force which had swept all oppiwiiRHi out
the skies in the first two or three days. By the end of the secoiw! week
the Polish Army had virtually ceased to exist as an orgarii/Cii Unci\
Warsaw and Modhn alone held out, much to Hiller’s anger Willaon
Shirer, the C.B.S. Correspondent, who heard him spcjk ai Ihiuif,
reported that Hitler had waited in the hope of making hh speech in
Warsaw, and was furious with the Poles for spoiling the cOecL
Hitler was certainly in no mood to hold out any oli\ e-branches. After
the inevitable justification of his actions, Hiller tin licit angrii) upon the
^ Schmidt, page 464.

505

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

British warmongers, who, he declared, had manoeuvred the Poles into
provoking and attacking Germany. Poland would never rise again in
the form of the Versailles Treaty: that was guaranteed, not only by
Germany, but by Russia as well. Poland, however, was only the pretext;
the real British motive was hatred of Germany. Hitler thereupon
burst into a series of threats. However long the war went on, Germany
would never capitulate. “Today you have the Germany of Frederick
the Great before you. . . . This Germany does not capitulate. We know
too well what would be in store for us: a second Versailles, only
worse.’’^

The authentic Hitler touch appears in his references to the Poles.
Poland, like Czechoslovakia, was dismissed as an artificial creation.
Like Liidendorff, coming to Vilna in 1915,^ Hitler was full of the Ger-
mans’ historical mission in Eastern Europe:

Thiity years would have been suincient to reduce again to barbarism those
territories which the Germans, painstakingly and with industry and thrift,
had saved from barbarism. . . . The fate of Germans m this State was
horrible. There is a difference whether a people of lower cultural value has
the misfortune to be governed by a culturally significant people, or whether
a people of high cultural value has forced upon it the tragic fate of being
oppressed by an mferior. . . . What was for us and also for me most depress-
ing was the fact that we had to sufier ail this from a State which was fai
inferior to us. . . .

It was in this same spirit of contempt for the Poles as a people of
inferior culture and mferior rights that Hitler was already beginning
to discuss the future of the territories he had overrun. The record of a
discussion on board the Fuehrer’s tram at Ilnau on 12 September shows
Hitler to have been still undecided between the complete partition of
Poland with Russia, and the establishment of a small, nominally in-
dependent Polish State, not unhke Napoleon’s Grand Duchy of Warsaw.
Hitler was inclined to favour the second alternative, possibly combining
It with the formation of a separate Ukrainian State out of the south-
eastern provinces of Poland. But at this point Russia’s views had also
to be taken into account.

The speed of the German advance in Poland took the Soviet Govern-
ment by surprise. They had hastily to change their own plans, and to
prepaie for an immediate occupation of the territory allotted to them
by the August Agreement. This was begun on 17 September and com-
pleted within a few days. The German and Russian armies met at

^ Text in My New Order, 693-706. ^ See above, page 289.

506

hitler's war, 1939

Brest-Litovsk, the town in which Germany had dictated peace to the
young and harassed Soviet RepubUc in 1918. The Russian advance
brought Soviet troops to the frontiers of Hungary, news which raised
the utmost alarm throughout the Balkans and in Rome. Hitler and
Ribbentrop did not share this feeling. Ribbentrop had pressed the
Russians to march into Poland from the beginning of the campaign,
and relations between the two Governments continued to be cordial
The Russians, however, showed considerable anxiety about Ibe future
of Poland and urged the Germans to open discussions with them at
once. After an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Stalin or Molotov
to come to Berlin, Ribbentrop left for a second visit to Moscow on
27 September.

It was Stalin who now took the initiative and, in the three meetings held
in the Kremlin on 27 and 28 September, largely succeeded in altering
the August Agreement to his own satisfaction. Stalin’s first demand war»
the abandonment of any idea of an independent Polish Slate which
might create friction between Germany and the U.S.S.R.-- a pidile
way of saying that it might be used by Germany against Russia. Instead,
Poland was to be entirely divided between the two Powers. Stalin’s
second demand was the inclusion of Lithuania in the Russian, in*
stead of the German, sphere of influence. In return, he was prepared
to make concessions in Central Poland, ceding the Province of Luhiin
and part of the Province of Warsaw to the Germans, alifiougli these
lay to the east of the original line of partition. He wus aKo prepared,
when Russia moved into Lithuania, to adjust the fronlier of
Prussia, to Germany’s advantage, in the Suwalki triangle. Stalm had
already made it clear in a conversation with the German Arnhas^udi^r
on 25 September that he proposed to “take up immediately the siiki-
tion of the problem of the Baltic countries,” and that he expected ific
unstinting support of the German Government in reaching seiilciiRnils
with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which would gi\e Rus’ua what she
wanted in the way of naval and air bases on the Baltic. Slili suspicioii^
of German intentions, Stalin had clearly decided to secure the maxi-
mum advantage from Hitler’s new policy at once, bcioic IIuLt tlsaiiias!
his mind again. So skilfully did Stalin play his hand that the fu d icsult
of the German campaign in Poland was to slrenglhei! the RiiHSiaii,
even more than the German, position in Eastern Fun^pc, aiu! lu laukl
over to the Soviet Union half Poland and the Ihicc lialtic Stales. I lie
Germans had even to withdraw their troopN rrom the oil lenon ot^
Borislav-Drohobycz, which they were eager to acquire, but which Sia!in
insisted on retaining in the Soviet hah of Polind. I lie only cuiiccssicui

:Ti/

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

offered in return was a Russian promise to export to Germany a quan-
tity of oil equal to tlie annual production of the area.

Hitler can scarcely have enjoyed the price he had to pay for agree-
ment with Russia, especially in the Baltic States, traditional outposts
of German civilization in the East which had now to be abandoned to
the Slavs. Yet there was no hesitation on the German side, and Ribben-
trop, after referring the final decision to the Fuehrer, was authorized
to sign before he left Moscow on the 29th and to accept Stalin’s demands
en bloc.

Why did Hitler attach so much importance to maintaining good
relations with Russia? Partly, no doubt, as his speech of 19 September
shows, because he realized that London and Pans were still counting
on a quarrel between Germany and Russia Partly because he hoped to
secure economic aid from Russia which would help to defeat the British
blockade The main reason, however, was the advantage which Hitler
saw in shelving the problems of Eastern Europe, at least for a time, and
leaving himself free to concentrate all his attention and forces on
dealing with the West.

VIII

Ostensibly, Hitler still held the view that, after the defeat and partition
of Poland, no furthei cause for war existed between Germany and the
two Western Powers. In a joint communique published m Moscow on
28 September Ribbentrop and Molotov expressed the view that, “after
the definite settlement of the problems arising from the collapse of the
Polish Stale . . it would serve the true interest of all peoples to put
an end to the state of war existing between Germany on the one side,
and England and France on the othei.”^ The same argument was given
great prominence in the German Press and radio, and there is every
indication that the German people would have warmly welcomed peace
after the successes m the east. The Army leaders, too, were strongly in
favour of avoiding a war with the Western Powers, and of arriving at
a compromise settlement. The plans which the Army Pligh Command
submitted to Hiller at the end of September visualized the deployment
of German troops m the west on strictly defensive lines.

The talk of a peace ofifensive, which was widespread in Berlin after
Hitler’s return from Poland in the last week of September, found a
fervent echo in Rome. The elimination of Catholic Poland, a country
for which Italians felt a traditional friendship; the advance of Russia
^ Nazi-Soviet Relations^ page 108,

508

hitler’s war, 1939

to the threshold of the Balkans; Hitler’s neglect of Italy for his rie^^-
found Russian friends, the feeling of being left out and no longei
informed of what was afoot, greatly increased the mixed emotions
chagrin, envy and resentment with which the Duce had watched Hitler\
success in the past month. Mussolini was eager for peace, if only to save
his own face. He was also anxious to discover Hitler’s intentjons, and
an invitation to Ciano to visit Berlin immediately after RibbentropN
return from Moscow was at once accepted.

Ciano found Hitler in a very different mood from that in uhidi he
had last seen him at the Berghof seven weeks before "'At SalzburgA
he wrote in his Diary, ‘'the inner struggle of this man, decided upon
action but not yet sure of his means and of his calculaiioos, wdh ap-
parent. Now, he seems absolutely sure of himself. The ordeal he ha» iiiei
has given him confidence for future ordeals.”^

Ciano’s record of his conversation on 1 October leaves no douhl
that, while still nominally committed to a peace offer. Hitler wa**.
thinking in terms of its failure and the deliberate extension of the v,ar
to the west. The effect of the victories he had won over Poland had been
to sharpen his taste for more. The inactivity of the Wesiern Ftmer*
during the Polish campaign presented itself not as an opportunity tor a
negotiated peace, but as further evidence of their feebleness, an in\ita»
tion to rid himself of their interference for good. The hesitations which
had beset him during the month before the attack on Poland were
as Ciano recognized, replaced by a serene selffcoiifidcnce. Ihe Pad
with Russia, which had given him a free hand in Poland, now giiaraniccii
his freedom of action in the west, without the need to uorrv iiK
rear. The fact that Plitler no more trusted the Russians than ilic> ii listed
him was an additional argument for setlling with Fiance and Biitaiii
as soon as possible, before he had again to look to Ciisicrri

frontiers.

Ciano summed up his impressions of his \isit in llicse word-a 'if I
were to state that the Fuehrer unreservedly picicrs a viduiua] bv a u to
a possible pohtical agreement, it would be aibitrarj and perliap'- iiupi u*
dent of me. . . . Today, to offer his people a solid peace alter a great
victory, is perhaps an aim which still tempts Hitler. Bai i! hi i>rdiT to
reach it he had to sacrifice, even to the smallest degiee, weal seem to
him the legitimate fruits of his victory, he would then a thousand Imic ,
prefer battle. Certainty of Ins superiority over ihe athersagN is a factor
which encourages his intransigence, |ust as the inlluentc oi Ribhcntroix
who does not conceal his extreme views, has the clfeci ol riiayn/
^ Ciatio's Diary, 1939-1943, page N>2.

509

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

the Fuehrer’s attitude more rigid towards the Western Powers/’^

Thus the much-advertised peace offer of 6 October, to which so much
importance had been attached in advance, was largely discounted by
Hitler before it was made. Hitler’s main purpose in making the speech
seems to have been to carry German opinion with him, and convince
the German people that, if the war continued, it was through no fault
of his. The unpopularity of the war and the longing for peace impressed
everyone who was in Berlin in the autumn of 1939. It was, almost cer-
tainly, with this undercurrent of disaffection in viev/ that the German
Press had been ordered to build up Hitler’s peace offer in advance, and
that Hitler now presented himself in his most plausible mood.

Plitler had flown to Warsaw the day before to review the victorious
German troops. Full of pride at what he had seen, he opened his speech
to the Reichstag with an exultant description of the triumph of German
arms — “in all history there has scarcely been a comparable military
achievement.” There followed a long passage in which Hitler made a
venomous attack upon the Polish nation and its leaders — “this ridicu-
lous State” — ending with a grossly distorted account of German-
Polish relations, in which a deliberate campaign of atrocities was repre-
sented as rising to new heights of infamy after the British guarantee.
Only when he had vented these twin emotions of arrogance and hatred
did Hitler turn to review the present situation.

He began by imdei lining the importance of Germany’s new relation-
ship with Russia — the turning-point in German foreign policy. He
repudiated any suggestion of “fantastic” war-aims directed to the estab-
hshment of German domination in the Ukraine, Rumania or even the
Urals: on the contrary, Germany and Russia had clearly defined their
respective spheres of interest, in order to prevent any friction arising
between them. Together they had co-operated to remove the last and
greatest injustice inflicted on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, the
aggrandizement of Poland at Germany’s expense. Where the League
of Nations had totally failed to provide the much promised revision of
the Peace Treaties, Germany and Russia had carried out a resettlemeiit
which had removed part at least of the material for a European con-
flict.

tlitier pointed to the new settlement with Poland as the culminating
achievement m his policy of ridding Germany of the fetters fastened
on her by the Treaty of Versailles. This last revision of the Treaty,
too, could have been brought about in the same peaceful way as in
^ Ciano’s Minute, C mid’s Diplomatic Papers, pages 309-16.

510

HntLR’S 1939

the other cases, but for the malignant opposition of the \«»ar$n
abroad. Hitler then proceeded to recite all the cit^rls fie had made :m
improve relations and live in peace with German>\

My chief endeavour has been to nd our reka i?rK With I i at

and render them tolerable for both .uitioas. . . , tkrrrarrr has '
further claims against France, and no such claim sh dl cur hr rv
I have refused even to mesition die problem of Ahace U -c. , . . I i

always expressed my desire to bury foievei tnu t. -i .i‘.

together these two nations, both of which base miu) M

have devoted no less effort to the achicsemenl of du m o .it' ^

standing, nay, more than that, of an Anglt^-Cjcrman h.iyd'h p. . . , I K* oa
even today that there can only be real peace in I urupe and ilrou'lv ^a: hi '
world if Germany and England tome to an unde^ '‘landan^ . , ,

Why should this war m the w-i be fought? the ic<!oi it np, ot
Poland? The Poland of the Vcrsaiiles Tieat> will nesei r lyaat. fiav w
guaranteed by two of the largest States in the world.

Hiller made it quite clear that tlie reorgani/a^on of Ccraral I
was a subject on which he would not permit aUc^nj*': lu
judge or reject my actions from the rostrum iT internalmaa! p!C‘.yi..p
tion.’" But the future security and peace of Lufope was i matter wfn-c!:
must be settled by international conference and aoreenjcaf, Oa; day
such a conference would have to meet and thew prubfcnit would have
to be tackled.

If, however, these pioblcms mu^t be soi\cd sinmei or later, then \l woulu h'
more sensible to tackle the solution befuic mdi ons of men aic hTSt ti'CiCs 'k*
sent to theii death. . . . Continuation of the picscrd state ot anjus sn the wi, ^ I
is unthinkable. Each day will scon demand iiicicasing sacr haw. . . . Cli-c
day thcie v ill again be a frontier between Geimany and f raikc, bin maead
of llournhing tow'iis there will be rums and enditss gja^cv uiA. . . ,

If, however, the opuilons of Mtwsis. Chincein! and In . !»hl.n\ers shuiild
prevail, this statement will have been mv Lisf, E f*n we ^ h nl light, ana theie
will never be another Novemh i, PdS, m Geanari lustcavd
Every paper in Germany at once bn4e mto headlir^js: ‘ilhlerE
Peace Offer. No war aims against Fiance anil Britaim Rcduciio-n of
armaments. Proposal of a conferenced’- As pu^paganda il a .odh
turned tiick; as a sinou.s offer of peace it wa^ va^rlhle^^, since com
tained not a sinaic concrete proposal other than by miplicalioo -
general recognition of Germany’s conquests as tlic basis ot any di’^-
cussion. When Daladier replied on 10 October and (diainbcriaifi on
the 12th, they left no doubt that they were not prepaicii to consider
peace on terms which, as ChaaiberUin put it, began witli die ab^ol^l^ion
^Te\t mli'v Ach’ O ice/, pages 72 l-5n “ iaUa tiisa tlu* finat h ? h i ;

51 i

CHANCELLOR, 1933-1939

of the aggressor. On the 13th an official German statement announced
that Chambeilam had rejected the hand of peace and deliberately
chosen war. Once again Hitler had established his alibi.

It was scarcely more than that. On 9 October, three days before
Chamberlain spoke, Hitler drew up a lengthy memorandum for his
Commanders-m-Chief in which he wrote: 'The German war aim is a
final military settlement with the West, that is, the destruction of the
power and ability of the Western Powers ever again to oppose the
State Consolidation and further development of the German people in
Europe. As far as the outside world is concerned, this aim will have to
undergo various propaganda adjustments, necessary from a psycholo-
gical point of view. This does not alter the war aim. That is and remains
the destruction of our western enemies.”^

At the end of September Hitler had already informed his three Com-
manders-m-Chief and General Keitel that he intended to attack m the
west. His memorandum of 9 October appears to have been written
in defence of this intention. The same day he signed Directive No 6,
the first paragraph of which presented his decision in more guarded
language- ‘Tf it should become apparent in the near future that Eng-
land, and, under England’s leadeiship, France, are not willing to make
an end of the war, I am determined to act actively and aggressively
Without much delay

Thus, a month after launching the attack on Poland, Hitler had rejected
his earlier idea of a peace settlement, once Poland had been overrun,
m favour of the deliberate extension of the war to the west. So far as
Hitler is concerned, it is at this point — the end of September or the
beginning of October — rather than a month earher, when the actual
fighting began, that he made up his mind to turn a single campaign into
a European war. This had been present in Hiller’s mind as a possibility
in August, and in his more excited moments he had been inchned, even
then, to declare that if the British and French wanted war they could
have It, and the sooner the better. The scales had finally been tipped by
three developments during September. The first was the speed and ease
with which the German Army had eliminated Poland. The second was
the passivity of the French and British during the Polish campaign,
despite the heavy superiority of the French Army in numbers when
compared with the small German forces retained in the west: this con-
firmed his conviction that they lacked the will to fight. The third was the
German-Russian Agreement signed by Ribbentrop: this afforded him
1 N.D. L-52. 2 N-D. C-62.

512

hifilr’s \\\r, 1939

the opportunity to turn west vuthnuU\urr>;r\iMhKd Lr*

and to knock out hrance and Bntai!i bcuuc lie ri vr /' ‘ , s
for the decisive ganiMe, the opening «*i ilse i ' ,

direction of Germain’s future cxptinsiiin
Neither agreement with Ry'.sa m^r the uU *

represented any change in Huler\ lU'- * ^ ,,

Germany's Lehetisiaum m the ea^vU I elamii 'Oi'U In ^ '
British opposition was a prcrcquisiic, nut a suh nurc inr ‘
ambitions. While Ribhentrop lalkeu cnlliu^ann^. i‘;> .e »

German-^Russian co-operation Hitler kept m. . vl, 1 :! n

IS no reason to suppose that he e\e^ ahujih ' . fuj a!/,'-. ^ e wui \

pressed fifteen >ears bef\ue in kup\'i. U.A . e in so u irn ;
attack Russia, that remamed in tiic lutare and Ia* was mip.uid i * it' iw
every advantage he could from the new rciaUondup \u:h \f< ii
particular the incstiniahle ad\an{age id sculiim vmiu ihe br ^
out the danger of a war on tv\(> Ironts. Hiller \ui< me : i : nt.ui In p ^
himself down in ad\ancc, he was prepared to vluu i» di adipe

himself to any new circumstance that appeared, hut 'd v 4»f ii*. ide.,

IS clear enough deal with Polami hca»rc liumng wcn, kI:J mUi f ninu'
and Britain, before turning hack ihc cau
To a man of Hiller’s hesUations the dcci^i nt in ia; Os *r !’ a
beginning of September represented a sc\crc p‘;chi'! pusa! tcn He :
supported himself with the asNunincc that it \>as a wa'"

on which he was embarking. Bui mnv ihal the oiiic d wav pa /, aoa d i!
military success had prosed i'olL ^o l\. o and so estiidkuv*, h'o * oidalcfuc
bounded up and lie let his ideas expand, in W\k\ mI a. ail a ’ *a -ce wa d
the Western Powers were gnmp li> do. he Wi>uld ti ' a '!'c r .LaU\c lu..i
self. It was a pattern winch had rcpcatcu il cl agam mal acaoi Mo -up -
out the >ears siiice 1933. Succcs- and the ab^e^cr o: rc iinap. a

Hitler to reach out fiiriher. to take b gper rKk^ a’u! lo sliorieo du inter-
vals between his amps. Ine car\e 1 at mounted Nleadiis friim the wph
drawal from the League m Ocudi «*, din - lyli the annoancciniS'P
of conscription and the rtiirJilanAiOon of ihc Rlanckuxf, ’o Xcom ^
Munich and Prague. With the c[s,a; v fumi polrica! i ? opav
Hitler had begun U> tiace a new foie, hat alrcau} d nev uun u Uf
follow the same cha^acUT!^tlC CiUjliun llic d.jcc weeks’ !tvu! war m
P oland was now to be fid lowed hy a uai m t!.e wc^. m which a! Lmo
four countries were huiind U> be mtohed hc'iulcs ( ici aaiw, Rema »wd,
as Ciano noted, from the hesitation and anxietie* 4?i the tune iwibic lie
had risked war, he wiu alieady on the wa> thaf asaimption t>t liis
own infallibility wiiwh marked ilic deteno, ration id ho juiigiiicnt,

513

L ii

BOOK ill

WAR- CORO

19 3 9 - I 9 4 5

CHAPTER TEN

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY

1939-1940

With the beginning of the war Hitler became more and more
immersed m the political and strategical calculations by which he hoped
to win It. His appearances m public became infrequent; his time w^as
taken up with diplomatic and military conferences, and such private
life as he had ever enjoyed was sacrificed to the claims of a position in
which he bore the sole responsibility for every decision that had to be
taken. If it is difficult at times in the intricate history which follows to
detect the figure of the man, this is not due solely to the character of
the records which have survived — minutes of conferences, diplomatic
exchanges and military directives: it corresponds to the actual con-
ditions of his life during these years. The human being disappears,
absorbed into the historic figure of the Fuehrer Only in the last two
years of his life, as the magic begins to fail, is it possible to discover
again the mortal and fallible creature beneath.

While therefore the present study makes no pretence to be a history
of the war, it must necessarily, for the greater part of this section, be
principally concerned with Hitler as the war-lord of Nazi Germany,
with the situations that confronted him and with the decisions lliai he
took.

In the autumn of 1939 Hitler was well aware that the professional
soldiers were opposed to extending the war by an attack in the west,
particularly at the time he proposed, m the closing months of the year.
Before he could develop his plans he had to master this opposition,
and to this end he drafted a memorandum setting out his views and
read it to the three Commanders-in-Chief, and Haider and Keitel
at a conference held on 10 October.

The memorandum was a wcll-constructed piece of work, which began
with the defensive argument that Germany must strike in the west in

517

\\ 4R-LORD, 1939-1945

order to prevent the occupation of Belgium and Holland by the French,
and sought to prove that time was on the side of the enemy, not least
because of the imcerlainiy of Russia’s intentions.

“By no treaty or pact,” Hitler wrote, “can a lasting neutrality of
Soviet Russia be insured with safety At present all reasons speak against
Russia’s departure from this state of neutrality. In eight months, one
year or several years this may be altered.”^

As he got iiUo his stride Flitler dropped the argument of a preventive
occupation nf {pc Low Countries and described the primary aim of the
operations ho picposcd as the total destruction of the enemy’s forces.
The detailed pCosage^, with their emphasis on mobility, speed and the
concentration of armour, show Hitler already thinking in the terms
which were to biing such success \rhen translated into action in May
and June, 1940.

In his eagerness to launch tiic attack during the autumn Hitler insisted
that the process of refilling and reinforcing formations used in Poland
must be earned out v iih a speed which might leave much to be desired.
If necessary, the attadJng forces must be prepared to go on fighting
nrfit into the depths of the \\ inter — and they could do this, he con-
duded, no long a» thc\ kept the fighting open and did not let it become
a war of pooitjons. With this always in mind the German Army was
to sweep ncr.\ . Holland, fielaium and Luxembourg, and destroy the
opposing i’ofces before tliey could form a coherent defensive front.

Hitler’s arguments did not consert the opposition in the Army. To
extend the war gratuitously, when all that was necessary was to stand
Oil the defensi\e; to force Britain and France to fight, when inaction
might well produce a compromise settlement, seemed to the generals
an irresponsible gjimble. Tiicy did not share Hitler’s confidence in the
siipcnoniy of the Get man Army over the French; and were sceptical
of the claims vhich Hidcr made for their advantage m armour and in
the air If the gamble fared to come off, and no quick victory was
obtained, Germany woiifi' fimd herself involved in a second world war,
for which, tlic} Lli, her re -oiirces were inadequate.

Recognizing that was unlikely to tolerate independent views

on the uodesirabilily of extending the war, Brauchitsch (the C.-m-C.
of the Army) and Hiiidcr (the Chief of Staff) made the most of technical
argument:^— the piobLni of re-equippmg the Army and transferring
it from Poland to the wcwi; the risks of a winter campaign, and the
strength of the Ibices opposing them. Just as Hitler camouflaged
liis belief tlial he could get away wuh another act of aggression b}

^ N.D. L-52,

518

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORS, 1939-1940

talking of the danger of waiting for the Allies to tiio\c so the
generals disguised their distrust of Hitler’s leadership by playing up
the practical difficulties. In the background the same group of men who
had urged Brauchitsch and Haider to remove Hiller by force in 193S
was again active— among them General Beck, the former Ciiief of SlaiT;
Goerdeler; Hassell, the former Ambassador in Rome; General Osier,
of the Counter-Intelligence (the Ahwchr), and General Thomas, Head
of the War Economy and Armaments Ofilce.

A lull followed, during which the generah ocgaii to hope that the\
had dissuaded Hitler from going on with his plans. But at the end of
October Hitler announced that the attack would begin on 12 November,
and Brauchitsch, as Commander-In-Chief of the Armr, \sas faced with
the choice between giving oidcis for an ofiensivc which he believed
was bound to end disastrously for Gcimany, and organizing c putsch
against the man who was the Comiuandcr-in-Cliief of tiw tierman
Armed Forces and the Head of the State.

The one institution in Germany which possessed the aiuhouiy and
disposed of the forces to carry out a coup cFetat was the Army, As a
result the histoiy of the active German Opposition is a history of suc-
cessive attempts to persuade one or other of the mihiafy icadem to use
armed force against the Nazi regime. It may vrcll be ai^ned that to
expect the commander-m-chief of any army to stage a muiiny m time
of war is to ask more than is reasonable. Whatever view is taken of ihc
difficult problem of moral responsibility, however, the lad is clear
enough that, as m September, 1938, the Army leaders ufiised to take
the action demanded of them by the Opposition group

For a few days at the beginning of November the conspirators were
hopeful. Their argument that, if Hitler w^erc removed, it w’ould be pos-
sible to reach a settlement with the Western Powers and save Germany
from the disaster of another 1918, appeared to be making an impression
on the Army High Command, who were badly shaken by Hitler’s
announcement of a definite date for the offensive m the west. Discussions
were held with the Army Chief of Staff, General Haider, and his deputy.
General Stuelpnagcl, on 2 and 3 November, and GencisJ 0::ster was
assured that preparations for a military putsch had been made, if
Hitler should insist on giving the final order for the attack. A meeting
between General Brauchitsch and Hiller was fixed for Sunday, 5
November, after which the Army leaders promised a fiaal decision.

The interview between Hitler and Brauchitsch took place in the Reich
Chancellery; it did not last long. Hitler listened quietly enough as

519

w\R-LORD, 1939-1 945

Braucliitsch set out his anxieties over the proposed attack, but when
the Cominander-iii“Chief remarked that the spirit of the German in-
fantry ill Poland had fallen far short of that of the First World War
Hitler flew into a rage, shouting abuse at Brauchitsch and forbidding
him to continue with his report. Under this direct attack the Com-
mander-in-Chief, who seems to have been not far from a nervous
breakdown, crumpled up. Furious at the defeatism of the High Com-
mand, Hitler peremptorily ordered the preparations to continue and
the attack to begin at dawn on the day fixed, 12 November.

Neither Hitler himself nor Himmler seems to have guessed the length
to which talk of a putsch had gone at the Ai my I Icadquarters in Zossen.
But they scarcely needed to worry. After the dressing-down he received
from Hitler, Brauchitsch (and Haider) hastily disavowed all interest in
ihe conspiracy. Chance otfered them a w'uy out On 7 November the
attack had to be postponed, owing to an unfavourable weather forecast,
and the High Command was able to make use of the same excuse to
secure further poslponemenis througliout the winter, wnthout raising
the main issue.

Hitler, however, did not abandon his plans On 20 November Direc-
tive No. 8 ordered the state of alert to be maintained, so that immediate
advantage could be taken of an improvement in the weather, while on
23 November Hitler suninioned the principal commanding officers of
the Army, Navy and Air Force to the Reich Chancellery for another
conference similar to tho;>e of 23 May and 22 August. Once again we are
fortunate enough to have a record of what Hitler said, which was made
at the time and captured after the war.^

The arguments which Hiilei used were the same as those he had put
forward on iO October, but he spoke more freely and the arguments
were driven home with greater force.

He laid great stress on the ibci that, for the first time since the
foundation of the German Finpire by Bismarck, Germany had no need
to fear a war on two fronlN The Pact with Russia brought no security
for the future, but for the present the situation was favourable to
Germany. The same was true of Italy, where everything depended
upon Miissoiinfs survival \hcr a lapid survey of the other political
factors. Hitler dievv this conclusion:

Fver> thing is determined b) the fact that the moment is favourable now.

in S’x nionihs it may not be so any more. As the last factor I must m aii

modesty name my own person: irreplaceable. Neither a miiitary nor a civil

'ND 789-PS

520

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

person could replace me. Assassination attempts may be lepeatcd. 1 am
convinced of my povers of intellect and decision. . . . Time is working for
our adversaries. Now there is a relationsh’p of forces which can never be
more propitious, but can only deterioiate for us. . . .

My decision is unchangeable. 1 shall attack France and England at the
most favourable and quickest moment. Breach of the neutiality of Belgium
and Holland is meaningless. No one will question that when we have won.

The closing passages show Hitler in an exalted mood. Carried away
by his theme, he was disarmingly candid:

Every hope of compromise is childish: Victory oi defeat! The question is
not the fate of National Socialist Germany, but who is to dominate Europe
in the future. . . . No one has ever achie\cd what I have achieved. My life
IS of no importance in all this. I have led the German people to a great height,
even if the world does hale us now. I am setting this woik on a gamble,
I have to choose between victory and desii action, i choose victory. Greatest
historical choice, to be compared with the decision of Fredeuck the Gicat
before the First Silesian War. Prussia owes its nse to the hctoism of one man.
Even the closest advisers were disposed to capitulate. Every thing depended
on Frederick the Great. . . .

The spirit of the great men of our history must hearten us ail. ... As long
as J live I shall think only of the victory of my people, f shall shiink from
nothing and shall destioy everyone who is opposed to me. I have decided to
live my life so that I can stand unashamed; if I have to die I want to dcstioy
the enemy. ... In the last years I have experienced many examples of in-
tuition. Even in the present development I see the prophecy. If we come
through this struggle victoriously — and we shall — our time will enter into
the history of our people. I shall stand or fall in this struggle. I shall never
survive the defeat of my people. No capitulation to the foices outside; no
revolution from within.

Although Hiller had designed the whole occasion in order to stamp
the impression of an inspired leadership upon his commanders, it is
difficult to believe that he was still only acting a part; the megalo-
mania of the later years is already evident. He failed to convince the
senior generals — Brauchitsch unsuccessfully offered his resignation
after the meeting — but it was certain that the vacillating doubts of the
High Command wmuld prove insufficient to bait Hitler m a mood which
had been hardened into reckless determination by his victory in Poland.
Ail that the generals could do—assisted, it appeals, by Goenng, who
also entertained considerable doubts and was loth to risk his Air Force
— was to make use of the continued bad V'veather to delay the start of
the offensive until well into 1940.

Meanwhile the impression which Hitler had formed of the lack of

521

L.H. — R'

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

enthusiasm for war among his senior commanders, and the suspicion
that they were prepared to use any pretext to avoid a clear-cut military
decision, strengthened the feelings of distrust with which he was coming
to regard the professional soldiers. The clash between Hitler and his
generals in the winter of 1939-1940, as most of ^ them subsequently
realized, bore fruit in his refusal ever again to let himself be influenced
by their advice, even in military matters. When the attack in the west
was followed, not by the disaster they had foretold, but by the most
startling victories of the war, Hitler was encouraged to believe that his
judgment was as superior to theirs in strategy, and even tactics, as he
had always known it to be in politics — with disastrous results for both
Hitler and the Array.

One curious, but fascinating, episode remains to be added to the
history of these autumn months of 1939 — the attempt on Hitler’s life
at Munich on 8 November.

While the conspirators of the Opposition group around Beck and
Oster had been trying, with diminishing hopes, to stir the Army High
Command to action, they were startled by the news that a bomb explo-
sion had wrecked the Burgerbrdu Keller in Munich a short time after
Hitler had finished speaking there on the anniversary of the 1923 putsch.
Two British Secret Service agents, who, it was suggested, knew of
the plot, were simultaneously kidnapped on the Dutch border, and a
carpenter, by the name of George Elser, was arrested on the Swiss
frontier, with a marked photograph of the interior of the Hall in Ms
possession.

It is not surprising that the Opposition were startled by this news,
for in fact the attempt on Hitler’s life was organized by the Gestapo,
as a means of raising the Fuehrer’s popularity in the country. Elser,
a skilled cabinet-maker, who had drifted into the company of
a group of Communists, had been picked up by the Gestapo m
the concentration camp at Dachau, where he had been sent for “re-
education.” He was offered his freedom if he would do what he was
told, and was taken twice by night to the Burgerbrdu Keller in Munich.
There he was ordered to build an explosive charge into one of the pillars
close to the spot where Hitler would be standing during ins speech.
An alarm-clock v/as place with the explosive, but had no connection
With the fuse, winch could only be started by electric current from
outside.

One of the fixed dates in the Nazi calendar was 8 November, the
day on wMch Hitler never failed to appear in Munich for his annual

522

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

reunion with the Old Fighters. This time he attended the celebrations
in the Burgcrbrdu as usual, but cut short his speech and left early.
He had not been gone very long when a tremendous explosion wrecked
the hall, killing several Party members and injuring many more.

Hitlefs secretary, who was on the tram taking the Fuhrer back
to Berlin, has described how the news reached them at Nuremberg.
It is possible that he had not been told of what was planned. At any
rate, he immediately seized on his escape as proof of providential
intervention. His eyes blazing with excitement, he leaned back in his
seat and announced: “Now I am content! The fact that I left the Bur-
gerbrdu earlier than usual is a corroboration of Providence’s intention
to allow me to reach my goal.”^

Goebbels made the utmost use of the incident to stir up resentment
against those who were lukewarm towards the war, and to portray
Hitler as an inspired leader, whose intuition alone had preserved him
from death. Elser, released a quarter of a mile from the Swiss border, was
arrested again as soon as he tried to cross it. The German Press seized on
his Communist connections, and a lurid picture was drawn of a con-
spiracy in which Otto Sirasser as well as the British Secret Service figured
prominently. At one time a big trial was to have been staged, with the
two kidnapped British agents in the dock, and Elser as the chief witness
carefully coached to prove that the assassination had been organized
by the British. The fact that the trial was never held suggests that,
m some way, the Gestapo gambit had failed. The timing had been
a little too perfect, and the German people remained stolidly sceptical
of their Fuehrer’s providential escape.^

Throughout the autumn and winter of 1939-1940 Hitler’s mind was
filled with the prospects of the olfensive which he meant to launch in
the west. Despite the successive postponements, he still thought of the
attack as no more than a few days distant, and not until the New Year
did he reluctantly agree to defer it to the spring or early summer. His
mood was bellicose: in December Weizsacker heard him say that a
campaign in the west “would cost me a million men, but it would cost

^ A. Zoller: Hitler Fnvat, page 181.

^ This account is based on that given by Captain Payne Best, one of the British
officers kidnapped on the Dutch frontier Captain Best got Elser's story from him
during their time in prison. Cf, S. Payne Best: The Venlo Incident (London, 1950)
pages 128-36.

523

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

the enemy that loo — and the enemy cannot stand In the meantime,
however, politics forced themselves on his attention, in particular the
awkward problems raised fay German relations with Italy and with
Russia,

The brief honeymoon period of the Pact of Steel was long since over.
The alliance was popular in neither country, and Hitler admitted at
the meeting with his commanders on 23 November that Italy’s reliability
depended solely upon Mussolini’s continuation in power. The Duce’s
own attitude was far from stable. On 20 November Ciano noted in
his Diary: “For Mussolini, the idea of Hitler’s waging war, and worse
still, winning it, is altogether unbearable.”^ A month later, on 26
December, Mussolini was hoping for a German defeat, and told Ciano
to lei the Dutch and Belgian Governments know surreptitiously that
their countries were thicatened with an imminent German invasion.

At other times Mussolini swung round and talked of intervening on
Germany’s side. But the ill-concealed contempt which many Germans
fell for their ”non-be!hgerciU” ally kept Mussolini’s resentment alive,
while German policy on a number of important issues was strongly
criticized in Rome, Hitler’s Agreement with Russia; the elimination of
even a reduced Polish State, in deference to Russian wishes; German
silence when Russia ailacked Finland; German behaviour m carrying
out the settiemeni over the South Tyrol — all these were the subject
of Italian grievances When the Russians invaded Finland at the begin-
ning of December, Ciano noted that there were demonstrations against
the Soviet Union in a number of itaiian towns — "The people say ‘Death
to Russia’ and really mean 'Death to Gcrmany.’”^^

A visit to Rome by Ley at the beginning of December did nothing
to remove Italian suspicions. Far from it, for on 16 December Ciano
made a two-hour speech before the Fascist Chamber of Corporations
which went further than ev'er before m its implied criticism of Italy’s
ally. Three wrecks kter Mussidim sent Hitler a ieiter winch represents
the high-water mark oi Mussolini's independence towards his brother-
dictator.

The mam burden of Mussolini's letter was the unfortunate con-
sequences of Hiller's Pact with Russia — discontent in Spam and Italy;
the sacrifice ol Finland in a war fur wbch Italian volunteers had come
forward in thousands, and the failuie to preserve an independent
Polish State. Opposed to an e\tension of the war in the west, Mussolini
urged Hitler to turn back and ^cek Germany’s Lebensraum in the east,
m Russia.

^ Wci/sacker. page 219. - Cmm'i Diar}\ page 176. page 180.

524

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

No one knows better than I [he wrote], that politics has to admit the demands
of expediency. This is true even of i evolutionary politics. . . . None the less,
the fact IS that in Poland and the Baltic it is Russia which has been the
great beneficiary of the war — without firing a shot. I, who was born a
revolutionary and have never changed, I say to you that >ou cannot sacrifice
the permanent principles of your revolution to the tactical needs of a passing
phase of policy. 1 am sure that you cannot abandon the anti-Bolshcvik
and anti-Semitic banner you have brandished foi twenty years . . , and 1
have a duty to perform m adding that one step further in your relations with
Moscow would have catastiophic results in Italy.^

Mussolini’s letter was not only evidence of the troablcd state of the
relations between the two allies; its arguments touched on a side of his
own policy — the Nazi-Sovict Pact — about which Hitler was never
altogether at ease.

The major problem in Geimany’s relations with Russia wtjs no longer
represented by Poland.^After the partition, w'hile part of the western half
of Poland was annexed to the Reich, the rest was formed into the
Government-General, under Hans Frank, once the Party's defence-
lawyer in the lean years before they came to power. The Government-
General was a testing ground for those principles of racial superiority
on which Himmler had built up the S.S. In Poland the S S. ti led out their
methods of racial extermination (directed in the first place against the
Jews, in the second against the Poles themselves)^ and created the first
model of the Nazi New Order based upon the complete subjugation of
inferior races, like the Slavs, to the Aryan master-race represented by
the S.S. Any fears the Russians may have had that Hitler would use
the Poles living under German rule to stir up trouble among the Poles
under Soviet rule were soon remoted by the biutal way in which the
Germans treated the population of the Govcinmcnt-Gcnerai.

The test of German-Russian relations in the winter of 1939-1940
was not Poland, but Finland. Hitler had accepted the absorption
of the three Baltic States into the Russian sphere of influence and
the painful sequel of the evacuation of the iong-eslablishcd German
population from those countries. Now he had to sit by silently while
the Russians used force to coeice the Finns, a people who liad close
ties with Germany and whose brave resistance to the Russians in-
evitably aroused admiration. The role of a neutral was humiliating for
the man who had conlinutilly summoned all Europe to join him in
throwing back the Bolshevik horde. Germany, hov\c\er, expressed
complete disinterest in the fate of Finland, and the Foreign Office
^ Mussolini to Hitler, 4 January, 1940 e Mimalmi, pages 33-39.

525

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

instructed all German Missions abroad to avoid any gesture of sym-
pathy with the Finns or criticism of the Russians.

Hitler can scarcely have been blind to the fact that the measures
taken by Russia to strengthen her position in the Baltic were obviously
aimed at defending herself against an attack by Germany. Yet, without
indulging in Ribbentrop’s infatuated dreams about the future of
German-Russian friendship, he still judged the price of co-operation
with the Soviet Union to be w'orth paying. The advantages on which
he counted w^ere threefold: economic, political and strategic.

Further economic agreements between the two countries were signed
on 24 October, 1939, and 11 February, 1940. So important were the
Russian supplies of raw materials for Germany that, on 30 March,
Hitler ordered the delivery of German equipment to the U.S.S.R.
to be given priority over deliveries to Germany’s own Armed Forces.^
The amounts promised by Russia in the Agreement of February, 1940,
ranged as high as a million tons of grain for cattle, nine hundred
thousand tons of oil, half a million tons of phosphates and half a million
tons of iron ore. In addition, the Soviet Union agreed to act as a pur-
chaser oil Germany’s behalf of metals and raw materials from other
countries.

Collaboration was extended from the economic to the political field.
In the autumn of 1939 Russian propaganda and the Communist parties
abroad gave support to the German thesis that the responsibility for
continuing the war rested upon the Western Powers — the so-called Peace
Offensive. The two Governments co-operated in bringing piessure to
bear on Turkey to prevent the Turks from abandoning their neutrality,
v/hilc the division of North-eastern Europe into spheres of influence
was put into effect without a hitch.

But the supreme advantage, which Hitler rated above everything
else, was strategic: the possibility of making his attack m the west
without worrying about the defence of Germany’s eastern frontiers.
Not only was he able to avoid a war on two fronts, but he was able
to concentrate practically the whole of his available forces in the west.
During the 1940 campaign only seven German divisions were retained
in the cast to guard the long line between the Baltic and the Carpathians,
and two of these were transferred to the west in the course of the cam-
paign. After the w^ar Goering estimated the Pact with Russia to have
been worth fifty divisions to Hitler, the number of troops he would
otherwise have had to keep in the cast. The Pact with Russia was in

^ N.D. 2,353-PS. Material collected for an Official History of the German War

Economy,

526

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

fact as much an indispensable condition of Hitler’s attack in the west
as of the attack on Poland.

Like Stalin, Hitler was taking advantage of a situation which neither
side expected to last long. For the moment the balance of advantage
appeared to be in Stalin’s favour, but Hitler was undismayed. If he
could use Russian neutrality to inflict a defeat upon the Western Powers,
he would more than redress the balance. Russia’s gains in Eastern
Europe and the Baltic would be forgotten if he could overrun the Low
Countries and France, drive the British Army into tlic sea and dictate
terms in the west. In any case, Russia’s gains need not be regarded as
permanent. In October, 1939, when talking to Keitel about the future
of Poland, Hitler had made one exception to the genera! policy of
neglect to be followed in the Government-General:

The territory is important to us [he told Keitel] from a military point of view
as an advanced jumping-off point and can be used for the strategic concen-
tration of troops. To that end the railroads, roads and lines of communi-
cation are to be kept in order.^

Hitler had shelved his eastern ambitions for the present but he had not
forgotten them.

Ill

On 10 January, 1940, Hitler ordered the attack in the west to begin on
the 17th, that day week, at fifteen minutes before sunrise. Three days
later he once again postponed it, and the last order in the captured
file of postponements speaks of 20 January as the probable D-day:
after that there is silence until May.

The very day of Hitler’s decision — 10 January — a German major
acting as liaison officer with the 2nd Air Fleet made a forced landing
in Belgium while flying from Munster to Bonn. He had with him the
complete operational plan for the opening of Hitler’s offensive, and
although he burnt part of it, enough fell into Belgian hands to alarm
the Germans. This settled the matter, to the barely disguised relief
of the High Command. Until the winter was over, and new plans
could be prepared, Hitler at last agreed that there was no further point
in postponing the start of the operation from day to day.

Hitler was partly reconciled to this decision by the interest he began
to feel in a new project, the initiative for which came fiom the Nava!
High Command. The Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy,

1 N.D. 864-PS.

527

WAR-LOFD, 1939-1945

Admiral Raeder, had been disappointed by the outbreak of war in
1939. By 1944, he believed, theie would have been a “good chance of
settling the Bniish question conclusively”; but in 1939 the German
Navy had neither sufficient surface ships nor U-boats to make a serious
challenge to British naval supremacy.

Searching for a means of increasing the Navy’s power of attack against
Britain’s sea-routes, Raeder hit on the idea of securing bases in Norway,
On 3 October lie asked his Naval Staff to prepare answers to a number
of questions on Norway, and on 10 October he made the suggestion
to Hiller in one of the Fuehrer’s conferences on naval affairsd Hitler
was not interested. At that time he was entirely absorbed in the plans
for invading the Low Countries and France, which he expected to put
mlo operation m November, and the Norwegian project was not
mentioned again until the middle of December.

By December the situation had been transformed by the Russian
attack on Finland. Allied aid for the Finns was under discussion m
London and Pans, and the possibility of British and French troops
being sent to Finland through Norway, even of an allied occupation
of Norway, was taken seriously by the Germans. For the most vul-
nerable link in Germany’s wai economy was her dependence on supplies
of iron-orc from Sweden. In 1 940 these supplies were expected to account
for eleven and a half million out of Gei-many’s total consumption of
fifteen million tons By occupying Noi way the Western Powers could not
only interfere with this vital traffic, but could cairy the war into the
Baltic and block the movement of German ships into the North Sea
and the Atlantic. Raeder was able to use these facts to support his
argument that, if Norwxiy were allowed to fall into British hands, this
might decide the outcome of the war.

At the same lime Raeder .suggested a means for securing Norway
which at once attracted Hitler. Through Rosenbeig, who held the
obscure post of head of the ParU's Foreign Pohc> Bureau, and who
had always bcui interested in the Noi die peoples of Scandinavia, the
Admiral had been put in tcueii with Quisling and Hagelin, the leaders
of the small Norwegian Nazi Pari> knovui as the Party of National
Unity Quisling, a former General Staff officer and Norwegian Minister
of War from 1931 to 1933, encouraged the belie! that, with German
siippoit, he would be able lo carrv out a toap LPetiii In ihis way the
German forces ncxded could be reduced to Dioporlions which would

^ niic Gtuaan Na\al VKhises — including the lecoids of Hit'or's wartime con-
ferences with his C -m-C s at the C -in-C of the Na\y was present— w'cre

captured m then entircts at the J of the wai The conlcience minutes have been
pLiblishvd by the Admii and coiieet.d in Bfasse}^^ Nu)ai Ahttual for 1948.

528

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

not disturb the main concentration on the western frontier or endanger
the plans already made to attack France.

Hitler was sufficiently impressed by Raeder’s argument to see Quisling
three times between 14 and 18 December, and to give orders for German
support to be made available to him Hitler preferred the method of
the coup d'etat because of its obvious economy, but, in case of lU failure,
he agreed to plans being prepared for an occupation oi Norway by
force. He had still not committed himself, but the final postponement
of the offensive in the west, in the middle of January, freed his hands,
and was followed on 27 January by the establishment of an Inter-serviccis
staff to woik out the details. The occupation of Denmark was to be
carried out at the same time as the operation against Norway.

While these preparations were being made in Berlin, in LenJon Mr.
Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, was urging a reluctant
Cabinet to give the British Navy permission to lay mines in Norwegian
territorial waters and so interfere with their use by the Germans fc^r
the transport of iron-ore from the port of Narvik. The Cabinet refused
to agree, but on 17 February the British destroyer Cossack intercepted
the German prison-ship Altmark in Norwegian waters and rescued
a number of British prisoners. This incident roused Hiller’s anger and
put an end to any hesitation. He demanded the immediate appoint-
ment of a commander for the expedition and agreed at once to see the
man proposed by Keitel, General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, who had
served in Finland in 1918 and who was at that lime in command of an
army corps at Coblenz.

Falkenhorst came to Berlin on 20 February. Hitler saw him for a
few minutes before liis daily military conference and gave him instruc-
tions to take over the preparations for the occupation of Norway,
He gave three reasons for his decision: to keep the British out of the
Baltic, to give greater freedom of operation to the German Navy, and
to protect the ore-route down the Norwegian coast. Falkenhorst, a
little bewildered by his new commission, was then dismissed and told
to return at five o’clock the same afternoon with his plans ready to
lay before the Fuehrer. He bought a Baedeker and retired to his hotel
bedroom. By five o’clock he had a rough plan sketched out, sufficient
to satisfy Hitler, and before he returned to Coblenz his new command
had been confirmed.

In the week that followed the interview with Falkenhorst, Jodi’s
Diary shows the greatly increased interest Hitler was now taking in
the Norwegian expedition. The force to be employed was to be kepi

529

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

as small as possible, and Falkenhorst was given no more than five
divisions. But the part to be played by Quisling had dwindled into
insignificance, and the Germans were preparing to carry out a military
occupation, relying on surprise to supplement the small forces Hitler
was willing to spare.

The risks involved in such an operation were great As Raeder pointed
out to Hitler in a conference on 9 March, it was contrary to all the
principles of naval warfare to attempt such an undertaking without
command of the sea. Everything, therefore, depended upon the element
of surprise. Reports of British and French preparations for the occupa-
tion of Norwegian ports as part of the plan to come to Finland’s aid
kept the Geiman High Command m a state of constant alarm lest they
should be forestalled by the Allies.

Their anxiety was relieved when the Finns weie driven to ask the
Russians for an armistice. This was signed on 15 March, and the danger
of an Anglo-French landing receded. But, having gone so far, Hitler
refused to turn back. Raeder admitted at a conference on 26 March that
the danger of a British landing in Norway was no longer acute, but
added that, in his opinion, Germany would sooner or later have to
carry out an occupation of Norway and that the moment was favourable.
Hitler entirely agreed. Exercise Weser (Norway) was to come before
Case Yellow (the code name for the attack in the west), and the pre-
parations were to go forward whether the Allies proceeded with their
plans or not. A week later, on the afternoon of 2 April, Raeder, Goering
and Falkenhorst reported that the preparations were complete, and
Hitler confirmed the order for operations to begin on 9 April.

The plan to attack Norway and Denmark was one of the best-kept
secrets of the war. The German troop concentrations in the west could
not be hidden, and there were periodic scares throughout the winter
that the invasion of France and the Low Countries w'as about to begin.
But such activity as took place along the Baltic coast passed unnoticed,
and Hitler gave nothing away. He made a number of speeches in the
first three months of 1940, but they revealed nothing of his intentions.

The first of these speeches was made on 30 January, when Hitler
celebrated the first seven >ears of his rule by appearing at the Sport-
palasi in Berlin. He poured elaborate scorn on the allied war-aims.
‘‘No nation,” he declared, “will burn its fingers twice. The trick of
the Pied Piper of Hamelm works only once The apostles of international
understanding cannot once again betray the German nation.”

On 24 February he appeared in Munich, on the twentieth anniversary

530

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939«-1940

of his first appearance at a big public meeting. Considering the oppor-
tunity this offered, his speech was disappointing. He was obviously
aware that the war was none too popular in Germany, but the argument
was laboured and he constantly returned to the same points without
making them more convincing. Only at the end of his speech was there
a touch of the old Hitler.

“It is the leadership of the German nation that counts,” he told
his audience of the Nazi Old Guard. “If in those days a certain Adolf
Hitler had been Chancellor of the German Reich, instead of a musketeer
in the German Army, do you believe that the capitalist idols of inter-
national democracy would have won?” In the same passage Hitler
described himself as “the flint that strikes the spark out of the German
nation.”^ In the first winter of the war, however, there were few sparks
to be struck out of the German people.

From Munich Hitler returned to Berlin, where he signed the pre-
liminary directive for Exercise Weser on 1 March, and received Sumner
Welles, the U.S. Under-Secretary of State, on the 2nd. The purpose of
Welles’s visit was to sound out the possibilities for the rc-establishment
of peace before the conflict began in earnest, and in particular to
strengthen the reluctance of the Italians to be drawn into the war.
Neither purpose commended itself to Hitler, and Sumner Welles’s
reception in Berlin was cool.

The American envoy’s visit to Berlin, as he soon recognized, was a
waste of time. Hitler was not to be diverted from the decisions he had
already made. But there was some slight hope of keeping Mussolini
out of the war, and Welles returned to Rome after visits to Paris and
London. The possibility that in Rome he would find a moic sympathetic
audience than in Berlin caused Hitler some anxiety. The Dace’s letter
of January had been left unanswered for two months- now, quite
unexpectedly, the German Ambassador informed Ciano on 8 March
that Ribbentrop would arrive in Rome in two days’ time, before Welles
returned, bringing with him Hitler’s long-delayed reply.

The letter was couched m the most cordial terms, and Ribbentrop
went out of his way to placate Mussolini. Throughout their two con-
versations he used every opportunity to stress the identity of Italian
and German interests. Although inclined to argue on some points—
notably on relations with Russia— Mussolini accepted the German
argument without dispute.

The Fuehrer is right when he states that the fates of the German and

Italian nations are bound up together. ... It is in practice impossible for
^ My ^ew Order, pages 783-8.

531

\v\R-LOliDs 1939-1945

Italy to keep out of the conflict. At the given moment she will enter the war

•md will conduct it along with Germany and in line with her.^

Ribbeetrop failed to pin Mussolini down to a specific date, but he
made good use of Italian resentment at the effect of the British blockade.
In particular the sudden ability of the Germans to find up to twelve
miiiion Ions of coal a year, and the trucks to move it, left a considerable
impression on the Jialians. To clinch matters, Ribbentrop invited
Mussolini to meet Hitler on the Brenner at any time after 19 March.

Even Ciano admitted that Ribbentrop had succeeded in reinforcing
the Axis by Ins \isit. He still hoped that Mussolini would keep Italy out
of the war, but Sumnci Welles, who saw Mussolini again on 16 March,
was impressed b) the change in the Duce. ''He did not seem to be
labouring under the ph}sicai or incntai oppiesston which had been so
obsiouh during my fust conveisation with him. ... Fie seemed to have
thrown off some great weight. Since that time i have often wondered
whether, during the two weeks v inch had elapsed since my first visit to
Rome, he had not determined to cross the Rubicon, and during
Ribbcntrop's \bit had not decided to force Italy into the war.”*^

As soon as he returned to Berlin, Ribbentrop telephoned to Rome
to ask for the Brenner meeting to be brought forwmd to the 18th.
Mussohni cursed — '“'These Germans rre unbeaiable; they don’t give
one time to breathe or to think matters over’' — but he agreed. Ciano
wrote that the Duce still hoped to persuade Fliticr to desist from his
attack ill the west, but he added gloomily: "It cannot be denied that
the Duce is fascinated by Hiller, a fascination which involves some-
thing deeply rooted m his make-up. The Fuehrer will get more out of
the Ducc than Ribbentrop was able to.”^

Fiowever much he might try to bedster up his resolution, Mussolini
could not o\ercorae the sense of iiifenonty he felt in face of Hitler.
As Ciano saw, the sole successes which Mussohni \alued wurc military
successes. Hitler had dared to risk war, and he had not. Hitler had only
to play on this fcclmg of humilialion to slimuiale the Dace’s longing to
assert himself and re\i\e his fiagging belligerency. When they met on
the Brenner, high up lo the snov\-covered mountams-~-lheir first meeting
Since Munich— Hitler oserwhelmed Mussolini with a flood of talk,
describing at length the course of the Pcissli campaign and the German
preparations for the attack in the v\est. Mussolini had little chance of

^ Ribbcntiopb con\cisat3ons wiih Musseiini in Cww/s Diplomatic PapCfS, pages
339-59.

" Sumner Welle, The Time foi Decision tN Y., 1944), page 138.

3 Ciano" s Diaiy, pages 220-1.

532

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

saying anything, yet he used the few minutes that were left him to
re-affirm his intention of coming into the war.

Back in Rome the Duce might grumble at the way in which Hitler
talked all the time, but face to face with him he was unable to conceal
an anxious deference. Hitler handled him with skill The impression
of German strength which he created and the confidence with wdilcli
he spoke stirred Mussolini’s old fear of being left out at the division
of the spoils. As the two dictators parted on the station platform, Hitler
could congratulate himself on the ease with which he had re-asserted
his ascendancy: three months later Italy entered the war.

Hitler said not a word to Mussolini of his intention of attacking
Norway — further proof, if it were needed, of the disdain with which
he regarded his Italian allies. From the beginning of April, however,
all his attention was directed to the Baltic and the north.

Meanwhile, exactly one day after Hitler confirmed 9 April as tiie
date for Exercise Weser, the British Cabinet at last authorized the
Royal Navy to mine Norwegian waters, an operation fixed for 8 April,
In case of German counter-action, British and French forces were
embarked to occupy the very same Norwegian ports selected by the
German Navy as its own objectives. Thus, between 7 and 9 April, two
naval forces were converging on Norway, and the scraps of news w'hich
reached Berlin of British preparations heightened the atmosphere of
tension in Hitler’s headquarters. Raeder was staking virtually the whole
German fleet on the Norwegian gamble, and if it had the ill-luck to
encounter the British fleet m any force, disaster could follow within a
few hours.

In fact, a German transport was sunk, and the German cruiser Hipper
brought to action by a British destroyer on the 8th But the operation
went on, and the tactics of surprise proved brilliantly successful. Oslo,
Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger and Narvik were captured at a blow.
Quisling’s coup was a miserable failure; the Norwegian King and
Government escaped, and six weeks’ hard fighting lay ahead before the
allied troops, now hurriedly landed, were driven out. None the less,
the British had been taken by surprise and “completely outwitted”
(the phrase is Mr. Churchill’s) on their own native element of the sea.
The British Navy inflicted considerable losses on the German forces,
but these were not much greater than Raeder had anticipated, and they

533

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

were a small price to pay for safeguarding the iron-ore supplies, securing
the Baltic, and breaking out into the Atlantic, with bases along the
whole of the Norwegian coast at the disposal of the German Navy and
the German Air Force.

From the beginning Hiller had taken a close personal interest in the
Norwegian expedition. Falkenhorst was directly responsible to him,
and HitleFs own command organization (the O.K.W., the Supreme
Command of the Armed Forces) replaced the Army High Command
(O.K.H.) for the planning and direction of operations. This led to con-
siderable friction and departmental jealousy. More important still was
the way in which it foreshadowed future developments. For Norway
marks the beginning of that continuous personal intervention in the daily
conduct of operations which w'as more and more to absorb Hitler’s
attention and drive his generals to distraction.

Hitler’s temperament was singularly ili-fitted for the position of a
commander-in-chief. He easily became excited, talked far too much
and was apt to blame others for his own mistakes, or for adverse cir-
cumstances out of their control. These faults were particularly noticeable
in April, 1940, as Jodi’s Diary shows, for at the back of Hitler’s mind
was the fear that unexpected difficulties in Norway might force him to
postpone the attack in the west once again. This still remained the main
objective, compared with which Norway was only a side-show.

Fortunately for Hitler, his gamble on time came off, and at the end
of April he ielt sufficient confidence in the outcome of the Norwegian
operations to fix a provisional date for the opening of the western
campaign in the first week of May. A slight delay due to bad weather
caused a change from 8 May to 10 May, a decision which threw Hitler
into a state of agitation. But this proved to be the final postpone-
ment, and at dawn on 10 May, 1940, the battle m the west was joined
at last.

Little though Hitler may have realized it then, he owed his success m
the Battle of France more than anything else to the long delay in opening
the attack which had so much irked him at the time.

The original plan for the attack had assigned the chief role to the most
northerly of the three German Army Groups in the west, Army Group
B under von Bock. This was to carry out a wide sweeping movement
through the Low Countries, supported by Army Group A (Rundstedt),
which held the centre of the German line opposite the Ardennes, and
Army Group C (Leeb), which held the left wing facing the Maginot

534

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

Line. For this purpose virtually the whole of the German panzer forces
were assigned to Bock on the right wing.

There were solid arguments against such a plan. It was a repetition
of the German advance in 1914 and so unlikely to take the Western
Allies by surprise, and it meant sending the tank forces into country
broken by innumerable canals and small rivers. Here they would come
into head-on collision with the pick of the British and French armies
advancing into Belgium, and even if the Germans succeeded in forcing
them back they would only be driving the Allies nearer to their fortified
positions and their supply bases.

The French High Command had framed their own plans to meet
precisely such an opening move, and had Hitler adhered to the original
scheme events might conceivably have followed the dictation of the
French rather than of the Germans. But an alternative plan had already
been worked out by the Chief of Staff of Rundstedt’s Army Group A,
General von Manstein, Manstein argued that the decisive thrust should
be made not on the German right wing, where the Western Allies would
almost certainly expect it, but in the centre, through the Ardennes,
aiming at Sedan and the Channel coast. Such a move would take
the French completely by surprise, for they (like many of the German
generals) had written off the Ardennes as unsuitable for tank opera-
tions, and this part of the French Front was more weakly defended
than almost any other. If the tanks could once get through the wooded
hills of the Ardennes they would be out into the rolling country of
northern France, which was well-suited to a rapid advance. Finally,
if the German plan proved successful, it would destroy the hinge upon
which the British and French advance into Belgium depended, severing
their lines of communication, cutting them olf from France and
forcing them into a trap with their backs to the Belgian coast,

Manstem’s suggestion was frowned on by the Army High Command,
but, thanks to the delays to which the start of the operation was subject,
Manstein succeeded in getting his scheme brought to Hitler’s attention.

Hitler was slow to change his mind, but Manstein’s proposals had
precisely those qualities of surprise and risk to which he attached so
much importance, and in the course of February he ordered the whole
plan of attack to be re-cast along Manstein’s lines, transferring the all-
important panzer forces from the right wing to the centre under von
Rundstedt.

This change proved decisive. The opposition of the Army High Com-
mand, supported by the aggrieved Bock, was not easily overcome, and
professional jealousy succeeded in getting Manstein transferred to the

535

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

coiBiTiarid of an infantry corps, vvhere he played a minor part in the
offensive. But by March Manstein's plan had become Hitler’s own—
he seems to ha\e believed that he had thought of it himself— and by
May the new orders were ready to be put into operation.

The German Army which invaded the Low Countries and France
on the moromg of 10 May consisted of eighty-mne divisions, with a
further forty-se\cn held in reserve. It included the formidable weapon
of ten panzer divisions, with three thousand armoured vehicles, a
thousand of which at least were heavy tanks. The first sensational
success was the overrunning of the Dutch and Belgian defence systems.
The key to this was the use of small forces of highly trained parachute
and glider troops which captured the vital bodges before they could
be destroyed, together with the famous fortress of Eben Emael on the
Albert Canal Hitler had personally conceived the most important
points m the plans for the use of the airborne troops. It had been his idea
to capture Eben Emael by landing on the roof a detachment of less than
a hundred parachute engineers equipped wnlli a powerful new^ explosive,
a success built up by German propaganda as a demonstration of the
power of Germany’s secret weapons.

But the crux of the operation, still unsuspected by the Western
Powers, was the thrust through the Ardennes. Rundstedt’s Army Group,
ranged along the frontier fiom Aachen to the Moselle, disposed of
forty-four divisions, including three panzer corps under the command
of General von Kieist. The armoured column was over a hundred
miles long, stretching back fifty miles the other side of the Rhine.

The plan worked with extraordinary success. The German armour
quickly traversed the Ardennes, passed the French frontier on 12 May
and were over the Meuse on the 13th. The High Command indeed
became alarmed at the ease with which Kieist w^as advancing.

Hitler shared this anxiety. He w'as preoccupied with the possibility
of a French counter-attack from the south, and personally intervened
to halt the advance of General Guderian's leading panzer divisions,
which had reached the Oise on the night of the 16th. A note in Haider’s
diary on 17 May reads:

fuehici IS tcinbly nersous. Fiightened b> his own success, he is afraid
to lake any chance and so would lather pull the reins on us.

The next day Haldei wiote:

Every hour is piecious. Fuehrer’s H.Q, sees it quite differently. Fucliiei
keeps worrying about south hank. He rages and screams that we aie on the
536

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

way to rum the whole campaign. He won’t have any part in continuing the

operation m a westward direction.^

The halt, however, was only temporary. The motorized infantry was
quick in following up, and on the evening of the IKtli Hitler was pei-
suaded to allow the tanks to resume their advance. Backed by an
irresistible superiority in the air, the German armoured thrust broke
right through the French front and threw the allied plans into confusion.
While the British Army and the best of the French divisions were fighting
fiercely m Belgium, they were cut olT to the south by the German dash
for the coast, and on the night of 20 May received the news that the
Germans had reached the mouth of the Somme at Abbeville. A week
later the Belgian Army followed the example of the Dutch and capitu-
lated. The British Expeditionary Force and the First French Army
were caught m a trap between the converging forces of Bock’s Army
Group on the noith and Rundsledt’s on the south.

The German plan of encirclement was only defeated by the brillianl
improvisation of the Dunkirk evacuation Between 27 May and 4 June
a total of three hundred and thirty-eight thousand British and allied
troops were got away by sea fiom the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk.
Yet the possibility of such an evacuation might well have been denied
to the British if Guderian’s tanks had not been ordered to halt a few
miles south of Dunkirk on 24 May, at a time when the British Army had
not yet fought its way back to the coast and there was nothing to prevent
the Germans capturing the last escape-port open to the B E.F.

The responsibility for this order has been disputed. Mr. Churchill,
on what appears to be slender evidence, places it on Rimdstedt; the
German generals themselves on Hitler.*^ The weight of the evidence,
including Haider’s diary written at the lime, is on the side of the generals.
At an angry interview on the afternoon of 24 May with the Commander-
in-Chief of the Army and the Chief of Staff, Hitler insisted on holding
back the tanks, against their advice and that of the commanders on
the spot. With his mind set upon avoiding a stalemate similar to that
which had followed the Battle of the Marne in 1914, Hitler was deter-
mined not to be diverted from his principal aim, the defeat of the French
Army, and he eagerly seized upon Goering s boastful promise that he
could finish off the British from the air. At all costs he wanted to con-
serve his armoured force for the next phase of the offensive which
would decide the battle for Paris and France

^ Quoted in B H. Liddeli Hart The Othei Side oj the Hiii (3rd edition, London,
1951), pages 190-1.

- The evidence IS summarized and discussed by Captain Liddell Hart, pages 185-202

For Mr Churchill’s view cf The Second H'otld War, vol. H, ixiges 68-70.

537

w iR-LOKD, 1 939“ i 945

These were far froiA being shorl-sighlcd arg'uinciitSj but for once
Hitler’s intuition betrayed him. Forty-eight hours later, Hitler was
persuaded to reverse his decision, and on 27 May the panzer troops
were allowed to resume their advance. But by then it was too late. The
British had used the unexpected respite to strengthen their defences
and were able to hold off the Germans long enough to complete their
evacuation. The fii^t of Hitler’s military mistakes was to have momen-
tous consequences for the future of the war.

At the time, however, the failure at Dunkirk appeared slight beside
the continuing news of German successes. So Mussolini, as well as
Hitler, judged. Fear of the consequences of going to war gave place
m the Ducc’s mind to fear of arriving too late. Gauging the mood of
his brother dictator with skill. Hitler found time in the midst of his
preoccupations to write a series of letters to Mussolini in which he
poured scorn on the feebleness of the British and French. Mussolini’s
replies were each more cnlhiisiaslic than the last, culminating in the
announcement, delivered by the Italian Ambassador on 31 May, that
Italy would declare war m the next few days. The date finally agreed
on was 10 June, and hosilliiies began on the 11th.

Hiller was delighted at Mussolini’s decision. He undoubtedly over-
rated Italy’s value a-^ an ally, and great efforts were made by Goebbcls
to convince the German people of the importance of Italian intervention
Ihe German people, however, showed no more enthusiasm for the
alliance than the Italians. Mussolini’s liming, indeed, was so bad that
his declaration of war in June, 1940, made their new allies appear even
more contemptible in German eyes than the Italian failure to fight in
September, 1939,

Meanv/hile, on 5 June, the German Army lencwcd the attack by
driving south across the Somme. The French had lost something like
thirty divisions, nearly a ihird of their Army, m the fighting in Belgium,
and only two out of the fourteen British divisions now remained in
France. With his depleted forces. General Weygand had to face a
numerically superior Geiman Army, elated by its victories, provided
with overwhelming air support and led by armoured formations against
which the French had no defence. In eleven days the battle was over On
14 June Paris was occupied by the Germans and the panzer divisions
were racing for the Rhone VaUe>, the Med.tenanean and the Spanish
frontier. On the evening of 16 June Ivl. Re>naud resigned, and the same
night Marshal Petam formed a i ev\ French Government, whose sole aim
was to negotiate an armistice. Less than six weeks after the opening of

538

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

the campaign Hitler was on his way to Munich to discuss with Musso-
lini the terms to be imposed on France.

Since the beginning of the Norwegian campaign on 9 April Hitler's
troops had overrun Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg
and France, had successfully defied the power of the British Navy,
driven the British Expeditionaiy Force into the sea, and infiicled a
shattering defeat on the army of Napoleon and Foch. For more than
four years between 1914 and 1918 the old German Army had fought at
terrible cost and without success to effect the bicak-through on the
Western Front which Hitler had achieved in little more than a month
with very small losses.

Before the war Hitler had scored a series of political triumphcn cul-
minating in the Nazi-Soviet Pact, which could challenge comparison
with the diplomacy of Bismarck. Now he had led tlie German Army to
a series of military triumphs which eclipsed the fame of Mollke and
Ludendorff and challenged comparison with the victories of Frederick
the Great and even Napoleon. Hitler, the out^ndcr w'ho had never been
to a university or a staff college, had beaten the i or..ign Office and the
General Staff at their own game.

It is customary to decry this achievement, to point, for instance, to
the luck Hitler had in encountering such weakness and incompetence
on the other side, to his good fortune in finding a Manstein to construct
his plan of campaign for him and men like Guderian to put it into
operation. But this is only a part of the truth. If there were weakness
and incompetence on the other side, it was Hitler who divined it. He
was the one man who consistently refused to be impressed by the military
reputation of France, the one man who insusted that a quick victory
m the west was possible, and who forced the Army against his generals'
advice to undertake a campaign which was to prove the most remark-
able in its history. If Manstein designed the p^an of campaign it was
Hitler who took it up. If Guderian was the man who showed what the
German panzer divisions could do when used with imagination it was
Hitler who grasped the importance of armour, and provided the new
German Army v/ith ten such divisions at a time when there was still
strong opposition inside the Army itself to such ideas, if Flitler, there-
fore, is justly to be made responsible for the later disasters of the
German Army, he is entitled to the majoi share of the credit for the

539

WAR- LOUD, 1939-1945

victories of 1940: the German generals cannot have it both ways.

But what use did Hitler intend to make of his victory? Hitler had
never looked to the west for the future expansion of Germany, but
always to the east. The conflict with Britain and France arose not from
any demands he had to make on the Western Powers themselves, but
from their refusal to agree to a free hand for Germany m Central and
Eastern Europe. This had been the issue between Britain and Germany
throughout 1938 and 1939, over Czechoslovakia no less than over
Poland, and it remained the issue now, in 1940.

So far the problem had baffled Hitler. Bribes, in the form of the Naval
Agreement of 1935 and the guarantee of the British Empire which he
offered in 1939, had failed to overcome British opposition, and m
September, 1939, this opposition had been carried to the point of de-
claring war on Germany. Hitler, however, far from abandoning his
hopes of a settlement with Great Britain as a result of the war, looked
upon the victories he had won in Poland and the west as clearing the
ground for such an agreement. The British had now, he felt, lost any
reason for continuing to adhere to their former policy. Their last ally
on the Continent had gone, their Army had been driven into the sea,
they must now surely accept the impossibility of preventing a German
hegemony in Europe and, like sensible people, come to terms — the more
so as Hitler had no desire, at this stage, to interfere with their indepen-
dence or their Empire. For his part, he was perfectly ready to conclude
an alliance with Great Britain and to recognize the continued existence
of the British Empire, which [he told Rundstedl], must be looked on,
together with the Catholic Church, as one of the corner-stones of
Western civilization. England would have to return the German colonies
and recognize Germany’s dominant position in Europe, but that was all.

In this frame of mind, preoccupied with the chances of a compro-
mise peace with Great Britain and daily expecting to receive an approach
from London, Hitler turned to the question of the armistice with France.
A final settlement with France could be allowed to wait until the end
of the war, but the character of the armistice terms offered to France
now might have considerable influence on the British. In particular,
a French decision to continue the fight from North Africa or the depar-
ture of the French fleet to join the Royal Navy vs^ould strengthen
the British determination to go on fighting themselves. On the other
hand, French acceptance of the German armistice terms might well
make the British think twice.

Mussolini was in a very different mood. He was eager to become the

540

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

heir of the French Empire in North Africa and to secure the mastery
of the Mediterranean, His claims extended to Nice, Corsica, French
Somaliland and Tunisia; an Atlantic outlet in Morocco; the acquisi-
tion of Malta and the replacement of Britain by Italy in Egypt and the
Sudan. As guarantees, the Duce wanted to occupy the whole of French
territoiy and to enforce the surrender of the French fleet. But, as lie
confessed with some bitterness to Ciano on the tram to Munich,
Hitler had won the war and Hitler would have the last word.

The German reception of the Italians was cordial, but Ribbentrop
made it quite plain that Hitler would not agree to make demands
of the French which might diive them to continue the war from North
Africa or England. Above all, the powerful and undamaged French
fleet must be prevented from joining the British. For this reason, no
less than for the effect on British opinion, Mussolini’s annexationist
ambitions would have to be deferred. Hiller proposed to occupy only
three-fifths of France, to allow a French Government in Unoccupied
France, to promise not to make use of the French fleet during the war
and to leave the French colonies untouched.

These were heavy blows for Mussolini, but after only a week’s cam-
paign, during which the Italian troops had not distinguished themselves,
he was in no position to argue. When Ciano, taken aback by Ribben-
trop’s sudden enthusiasm for peace, asked him. '"Does Germany at
the present moment prefer peace or the prosecution of the war?”
Ribbentrop replied without hesitation* "Teace.”^ Faithfully echoing
Hitler’s opinions on the value of the British Empire, Ribbentrop told
his Italian colleague m confidence that Britain liad already been
informed of the Fuehrer’s conditions through Sweden. Hitler agreed
not to conclude an armistice with France until she had come to terms
with Italy as well, but he declined Mussolini’s suggestion of joint
German-Italian negotiations with the French. He had no intention of
sharing his triumph.

From Munich, where the talks with Mussolini and Ciano had taken
place on 18-19 June, Hitler flew back to his Field Headquarters at
Bruly-le-P6che, and the final terms of the armistice were drafted on the
20th. Paul Schmidt and the translators worked all night by candle-light
in a little village church to complete the French version, with Keitel,
and sometimes Hitler, coming m to see what progress they were
making.

For the signing of the armistice Hitler had appointed the exact place
^ Ciano' s Diplomatic Fapefs, pages 372-5.

541

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

in tlie Forest of Compiegne, north-east of Pans, where Foch had dic-
tated the terms of capitulation to the German delegation on 11 Novem-
ber, 1918. The old restaurant car m which the negotiations had taken
place was brought from its Paris museum and set up on the identical
spot it had occupied in 1918.

It was a hoi June afternoon, with the sun casting shadows through
the elms and the pines, when Hitler — in uniform, with the Iron Cross
on his chest — stepped out of his car and strode into the clearing. He
was accompanied by an impressive retinue, Goering, with his Field-
MarshaFs baton, Keitel, Brauchitsch, Raeder, Ribbentrop and Hess.
Silently he led the little procession up to the block of granite on which
the French inscription read: “Here on 11 November, 1918, succumbed
the criminal pride of the German Reich . . . vanquished by the free
peoples which it tried to enslave.” Fifty yards away, in the shelter of
the trees, Bill Shirer, the C.B S. Correspondent, was watching intently
through field-glasses. As Hitler turned Shirer caught his expression, a
mixture of scoin, anger, hate and triumph:

He steps off the monument and contrives to make even this gesture a master-
piece of contempt. . , . He glances slowly i cund the clearing. . . . Suddenly, as
though his face were not giving quite complete expression to his feelings,
he throws his whole body into harmony with his mood. He swiftly snaps
his hands on his hips, arches his shoulders, plants his feet wide apart. It is
a magnificent gesture of defiance, of burning contempt for this place and ail
that it has stood for m the twenty-two years since it witnessed the humbling
of the German Empire,^

Shortly afterwards the French delegates arrived. Hitler received them
in silence. lie stayed to listen to the reading of the preamble, then rose,
gave a stiff salute with his outstretched arm, and, accompanied by his
retinue, left the railway car. As he strode back down the avenue of trees
to the waiting cars the German band played the German national
anthem, Deutschland Uber alles, and the Nazi Horst Wessel Song. The
one-time agitator, who told the Munich crowds in 1920 that he would
never rest until he had torn up the Tieaty of Versailles, had reached the
peak of his career. He had kept his promise: the liuiiiihation of 1918
was avenged.

No other touiist has ever paid his first visit to Paris as a conqueror.
Hitler combined both roles. He came at the end of the month, made a
tour of the sights, went up the Eiffel Tower and stood in rapt contem-
plation before the tomb of Napoleon in the Hotel des Invaiides. Paris,
^ William Shiicr: Bedm Diary ^ page 331,

542

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

however, did not impress him as much as the Italian cities and he was
critical of its architecture. Early in July he returned to his headquarters
near Freudenstadt, in the depths of the Black Forest, and \\as back
in Berlin to receive Ciano on the 7th.

With France Hitler had every reason to be satisfied. The French
Government had been relieved by the comparative moderation of the
German demands, and the armistice was signed without further diffi-
culty. But the news which Hitler had been waiting for since the middle
of June, a sign from London that the British were willing to consider
peace negotiations, still failed to come. Tentative soundings through
the neutral capitals produced no result. On 18 June Mr. Churchill,
speaking in the House of Commons, declared the Governmenrs deter-
mination to fight on, whatever the odds, "‘so that, if the British Empire
and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say:
‘This was their finest hour.’ ” On 3 July the British Government under-
lined its resolve by ordering the British Navy to open fire on the French
warships at Oran. Hitler continued to postpone the speech he \vas to
make to the Reichstag in order to give England sufficient time to make
the decision he hoped for, but he was much less confident than he had
been at Munich in June. Ciano found him in a divided mind, un-
willing to commit himself to any course, but prepared to admit the
possibility that the war would have to continue.

Hitler waited another twelve days and then at last summoned the
Reichstag for 19 July, more than a month after the collapse of France.
His speech has often been described as a peace offer, although in fact it
marks the end of Flitlcr’s hopes of a settlement with Britain. The month’s
silence left little doubt that the British, to Hitler's genuine astonishment
and even regret, were resolved to continue the war. After waiting in
vain for a move on the part of the British Government Hiller decided
to make a direct appeal himself, as a last gesture. almost causes me
pain,” he told the Reichstag, “to think that I should have been selected
by Fate to deal the final blow to the structure v'hich these men have
already set tottering. . , . Mr. Churchill ought perhaps, for once, to
believe me when I prophesy that a great Empire will be destroyed — an
Empire which it was never ray intention to destroy or even to harm, . , .

‘Tn this hour, I feel it to be my duty before my own conscience to
appeal once more to reason and common sense in Great Britain as much
as elsewhere. I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since
1 am not the vanquished begging favours, but the victor speaking in
the name of reason. I can sec no reason why this war must go
^ My New Order, pages 809-38.

543

%\AR-LORD, 1939-1945

The occasion was a splendid one, marked by the promotion of Goer-
in g to the special rank of Rcichsmarshal and of twelve generals to be
field-marshals. Hitler himself was at the top of his form as an orator,
speaking with more control than usual and conveying an liiiusiiai sin-
cerity m what he said. OutVvurdly it was a scene of triumph, yet the
impression left at the end was one of uncertainty, and Ciano reported
that there was lil-conccaled disappointment among the Germans he
met at the iin favourable British reaction to Hitler's offer.

it is doubtful whether Hitler himself expected anything else. He had
already issued the directi\e for the invasion of Britain three days before
his speech. This was the obvious answer: if Bniain would not come to
terms she must be forced to submit. So, throughout the rest of the
summer of 1940 and w^ell into the autumn, the prepaiations for a direct
assault on the Brfnsh Isles continued, and all the world w^aited for the
news that Hitler had launched his nmasion armada across the Channel.

How then did it come about that, fi\e months after his speech to the
Reichstag, Hiller signed the order foi the invasion, not of Britain, but
of the SoMet Union? Why did he change his mind, why did he make the
mistake of attacking Russia before he had finished with Britain, thereby
deliberately incurring the dangers of a war on tW'^o fronts'^ To find
an answer to these questions it is necessary to examine more closely
Hitler's attitude to the war during the latter half of 1940.

The Commander-in-Chiei' of the German Navy, Admiral Raeder,
had set Ins staff to work on the problems invohed in an attack across
the English Channel as early as November, 1939. Hitler himself,
however, showed no interest in such an operation until after the con-
clusion of the campaign in France. H^s plans for that campaign con-
tained no provision for a subsequent attack on Britain; Raedeffs
attempts to raise the matter at coaferenevN with the Fuehrer on 21 May
and 20 June proved unsuevessfui, and until the end of June Hitler's
view'" of the future was based on the a^sjoiption that the British would
be willing to come to terms.

It w^as not until 2 Jul} that Keitel issued instructions to the three
Services to prepare plans, and not until 16 July that Hitler signed ins
owm directive fixing the middle of August the date by which prepara-
tions must be completed. Even then the opening sentences revealed

544

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

Hitler's reluctance: “As England, in spite of the hopelessness of her
military position, has so far shown herself unwilling to come to any
compromise, I have decided to begin to prepare for, and if necessary
to carry out, an invasion of England."^

Five days later, after the failure of his Reichstag speech to elicit a
change of heart in London, Hitler again spoke to Raeder in gloomy
terms of the difficulties of the operation:

The invasion of Britain is an exceptionally daring undertaking, because even
if the way is short this is not just a river crossing, but the crossing of a sea
which is dominated by the enemy. This is not a case of a single-crossing
operation as in Norway; operational surprise cannot be expected; a defen-
sively prepared and utterly determined enemy faces us and dominates the sea
area which we must use. For the Aimy forty divisions will be required;
the most difficult part will be the continued leinforcemcnt of military stores.
We cannot count on supplies of any kind being available to us in England.
The prerequisites are complete mastciy of the air, the operational use of
powerful artillery in Dover Strait, and protection by minefields. The time of
year is an important factor too. The main opeiation will therefore have to
be completed by 15 September. ... If it is not certain that preparations
can be completed by the beginning of September, other plans must be
considered.-

The discussions which continued throughout the summer confirmed
rather than reduced the difficulties Hitler had foreseen. An acrimonious
debate was conducted between the Army and the Navy on the number
of divisions which could be put across the Channel and the width of
the front on which landings W'ere to be made. The sailors, it is clear,
disliked the whole project — Raeder would have preferred to concen-
trate Germany's naval and air forces on starving Britain into surrender.
Not only was he powerfully impressed by Germany’s naval inferiority,
but he had the greatest difficulty m providing sufficient transport for
the thirteen divisions (instead of forty) to which the Army was even-
tually limited. Although the movement of shipping to the embarkation
ports began on 1 September and operational schedules were issued on
the 3rd, no final order could be given until the Luftwaffe had achieved
superiority in the air, and this — despite Goenng's boast—was still denied
them. The switch of German bomber squadions from the South Coast
ports and airfields to attacks on London failed to achieve a decision.
On 14 September Hitler took the view that it would be inadvisable to
call oSOpciatwn Sea-Lion partly in view of the loss of piestige involved,

^ N.D. 442-PS. The code name foi the invasion of Britain \^as Sea-Ijon,

- Fuehrer Cmiftfences an Nava! Affairs, 1939: Conference of 21 July, 1940.

545

L H — b

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

but postponements continued, and on 12 October a brief directive
announced:

The Fuehrer has decided that from now until the Spring, preparations for

Sea^^Lion shall be continued solely for the purpose of maintaining political

and military pressure on England.

Should the invasion be reconsidered in the spring or early summer of

1941, orders for a renewal of operational readiness will be issued later. . . .

Keitel.'^

This was not quite the end of the project. In December, 1940, the
possibility of invading Ireland was discussed, and m January, 1941,
General Student was summoned to the Obersalzberg to discuss the use of
airborne troops in an invasion of England. On the way back, however,
Goeiing told Student not to worry about the problem; he spoke of it
as no longer a serious possibility. The preparations of the summer of
1940 were never re\i\cd, and the operation, after being shelved for a
year, was quietly cancelled in January, 1942.

There is no doubt that the practical difficulties in the w'ay of a success-
ful invasion were formidable. But even more striking is the fact that
Hitler himself, who so often forced through a project in the face of
difficulties and against the advice of his professional advisers this time
failed to pro\idc the necessary impetus to convince those most con-
cerned that he was wholehearted in his order for the operation.

One explanation of Hitler’s lack of conviction is that he regarded the
preparations as another way of bringing pressure to bear on the British
to come to tenns — as an elaborate bluff, which he was obliged to drop
when the British refused to be frightened into capitulation. This seems
to have been the view of Rundstedt, who was appointed to command
the invading force.

Another \iew is also possible. Hitler, it can be argued, came reluctantly
to accept the need of continuing the war in the west. He then made up
his mind to an invasion of Britain, but rapidly lost faith in it, partly
on account of the difficulties in\oi\ed, but even more on account of a
growing preoccupation with Russia.

To appreciate the force of this argument it is iiccc.^sary to recall that
Hitler’s quarrel with the Western Powers had arisen out of his claim
to a free hand in Europe. The ultimate aim of his policy had always
been the old dream of finding Germany’s future in the east which had
fascinated him ever since he wrote Mem KampJ. The Pact with Russia,

^ Martienssen. Hit let and his Admit ah, pages 90-1.

546

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

which he had never regarded as more than a temporary expedient,
had been made for limited purposes, to secure first the isolation of
Poland, and later freedom of action against the west. The campaign
in the west, however, did not represent any final aim. On the contrary,
it was in its turn a necessary prehminary to turning back to the east,
and, according to General Jodi, at the height of the fighting in the west
Hitler expressed his determination to deal with Russia as soon as the
military situation made it at all possible.

Hitherto Hitler had always made it a condition of any attack on
Russia that Germany must first be secure against intervention from the
west. In his speech to the generals on 23 November, 1939, lie had
repeated this condition, first laid down in Mein Karnpf: We can oppose
Russia only when we are free in the w'est.”

The lightning campaign m the west had been designed to secure
this. With France out of the war, and Britain obliged to make a
compromise peace, Hitler would then be able to resume his eastern
ambitions without anxiety about Germany’s western frontiers. By
July it was clear to Hitler that he had realized only a part of his plan.
France had been defeated, and the British had been expelled from the
Continent, but they had not yet been brought to conclude an armistice.
It was at this point, some time in the summer of 1940, that Hitler made
his fatal decision and determined to launch his attack on Russia, wheiher
or not he had first brought Britain to terms.

The stages by which Hitler came to this resolution are unknown to
us— whether his decision was preceded by a brief period during which
he really intended to carry out the invasion of Britain; whether these
preparations were never more than a bluff; or whether for a time he
balanced the two projects, Sea-Lion and Barbarossa,^ in his mind
before coming down finally in favour of the latter. What is clear is that,
once Hitler began seriously to consider a major campaign in the east,
he had very good reasons for hesitating to involve himself in the risky
gamble of an invasion of the British Isles. This was reinforced by his
resentment at the advantage which the Russians were taking of his
preoccupation with the west. In June, 1940, while the Battle of France
was still in progress, the Soviet Government annexed the Baltic
States without informing the Germans in advance, and followed this
by heavy pressure on Rumania to make a further cession of territory.
Always sensitive to any change in the east, Hiller’s suspicions of the
Russians mounted in proportion to the treachery of his own intentions.

^ T!iia< was the code-name for the invasion of Russia.

547

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

For a moment in July, under the impression of the victories he had
won in the west, Hitler was tempted to leave the British to sit behind
their island defences and turn eastwards at once, launching an attack
on Russia in the autumn of 1940. Keitel, however, was able to persuade
his master that practical considerations alone — the impossibility of
building up the forces required m so short a time"--ru!ed this out. The
proposal for the invasion of Russia was nevertheless only postponed,
not abandoned.

At a discussion in Berlin on the last day of July Haider records Hitler
as saying:

‘Til the event that invasion does not take place, our efforts must be
directed to the elimination of all factors that let England hope for a change
m the situation. . . . Britain’s hope lies in Russia and the U.S.A. If Russia
drops out of the picture, America too, is lost for Britain, because the
elimination of Russia would greatly increase Japan’s power in the Far
East, , . , Decision: Russia’s dei>truction must therefore be made a part of
this struggle. . . . The sooner Russia is crushed the better. The attack will
achieve its purpose only if the Russian State can be shattered to its roots with
one blow. ... If we start in May, 1941, we will ha\e live months m which to
finish the job.”^

Hitler stiil put the invasion of Britain m the front of his argument,
but the idea of an attack on Russia henceforth acted as a magnet to
draw his attention away from the Channel and from an operation upon
which he had entered with reluctance in the first place.

In fact, the preliminary planning for Barbarossa started at the
beginning of August, little more than a fortnight after Hitler signed
the first directive for the invasion of Britain. On 29 July General Jodi
visited the O.K.W ’s planning section, the Department of National
Defence, at Bad Reichenhall, and told its head, General Warlimont,
that Hitler had made up his mind to prepaie for war against Russia.
At a later date [Wailimont testified after the war] 1 talked with Hitler my-
self. He had intended to begin the war against the U.S.S.R. as early as the
autumn of 1940, but he gave up this idea. The leasoii was that the strategic
position of the troops at that time was not favouiable for the purpose. The
supplies to Poland were not good enough; railw^ays and bridges were not
prepared; the communication lines and aerodromes were not organized,
Therefoie, the oidcr was given to sccuie the transpoit and to prepare for
such an attack as w'ould eventually be made.-

Warlimont’s Staff at once set to work, and on 9 August got out the
first directive {Aujbau Ost) to start work in the deployment areas in the

^ Haider’s Diaiy, quoted b> Chester Wilmot The St Higgle jor Em ope (London,
1952), page 56

^ Wariimont’s affidavit; N.P , |‘art VI, page 237.

548

THE iNCONCLUSIVL VICTORY, 1939-1940

east for the reception of the large masses of troops which would be
needed.^

At roughly the same time Hitler also gave orders to the Army General
Staff under Haider, quite independently of Warlimont's team, to pre-
pare a plan of campaign for operations against the Soviet Union.
Early in August Haider saw the German military attache in Moscow,
Koestring, told him in confidence of what was afoot and warned him
to be ready to answer a lot of questions.- Thus, on 3 September, 1940 ,
when General Paulus took over the office of Quartermaster General
of the Army, he found a skeleton operational plan for the offen-
sive already in existence and this was completed by the beginning of
November.*^ The plan was presented to Hitler by General Haider
on 5 December, and Hitler then gave it his approval, stressing that the
primary aim was to prevent the Russian armies withdrawing into the
depths of the country and to destroy them in the first encounter. The
number of divisions to be committed was fixed at 130-140 for the entire
operation.^

The movement of troops to the east began in the summer of 1940.
In November the Economic Section of the O K.W. (the Wirtschafts-
HLstimgsamt) set to work on the economic preparations for the attack.
On 14 August the Section's head, General Thomas, was informed that
the Fuehrer desired punctual deliveries to the Russians to continue only
until the spring of 1941 , A special department for Russia was established
and among its tasks was a survey of the whole of Russian industry
(especially the arms industry) and of the sources of raw material supplies
(especially of petroleum).*'

These dates, pieced together from a dozen different sources, are im-
portant, for they show that from the beginning of August, 1940 (more
than four months before he signed the first formal directive for the
invasion of Russia), the work of getting out plans and making detailed
preparations was steadily going forward on Hitler's instructions.

Why then, it may be asked, did Hitler continue with the preparations
for the invasion of Britain until October?

Even when he had made up his mind finally in favour of Barbarossa
and against Sea- Lion, there was every reason why he should not
advertise his decision. It suited him very well to keep attention focused

^Warlimont's testimony, N D. 3,03 l-PS, 3,032-PS, and a fuither affidavit in
N C.A , Supp B, pages 1,634-7

^ Koestrmg’s Athdasit, N.D 3,014-PS
Paulus’s evidence at Nurembeig, N P , part VI, page 240
War Diary of the O K W. Operations Stalk N.D. i,799-PS.

® N.D, 2,353-PS

549

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

on the Channel coast as long as possible. This is borne out by the
extreme secrecy in which the plans for Barbarossa were drawn up.
The Commander-in-chief of the Navy, Admiral Raedcr, in a memo-
randum written in January, 1944, admitted that he had no idea in
September, 1940, of what was in Hitler’s mind, although he later came
to believe that at that time ‘The Fuehrer was already firmly resolved on
a surprise attack against Russia, regardless of what was the Russian
attitude to Germany,”^ The Coramander-in-Cliief of the Air Force,
Goering himself, was also kept in the dark until November.

A further reason was the hope that Britain might yet be bombed
into submission. In the late summer of 1940 the German Air Force
concentrated all its forces against Britain, and throughout the winter
of 1940-1941 maintained the blitz on London and the other big cities.
Hitler, now that he had postponed the attack on Russia to the spring of
1941, was w'ilHng to see whether the heavy German air-raids, added
to the threat of invasion, might not shake the British resolution to
continue the war. And it was for this reason that the Luftwaffe attacks
on Britain, which had begun as the preliminary to invasion, were con-
tinued well after any serious intention of carrying out such an operation
had been abandoned.

To be dogmatic about Hitler’s intentions in the summer of 1940 would
be unwise. But there is considerable evidence to support the view that
if he ever took seriously the proposal to invade Britain — as distinct
from the threat — it was for a brief period only, and that from an early
date his attention was turning towards the east. When he finally ex-
pressed, in the directive of 18 December, his intention to invade Russia,
it was no hastily improvised decision, but one which already had behind
it several months of hard work by the planning departments of the
O.KW. and the O.ICH,

There was a third possibility, an alternative to the invasion of either
Britain or Russia, which Admiral Raeder persistently urged Hitler to
consider — the Mediterranean, and the adjacent territories of North
Africa and the Middle East, Here, Raeder argued, was the most vulner-
able point in Britain’s imperial position, the weak link against which
Germany ought to concentrate all her strength.

^Racdcr’s Memorandum for Admiral Assmann, the official naval historian:
N.D. C-66.

550

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

As he developed Ms case in two discussions with Hitler, on 6 and
26 September, Raeder brought forward additional arguments, the
economic importance of this area for supplying the raw materials
Germany so badly needed, and the dangers of a British, or even Ameri-
can, landing in French West Africa by way of the Spanish and Por-
tuguese islands in the Atlantic, At the second of these conferences
Raeder made certain concrete proposals. Gibraltar and the Canary
Islands should be secured, and the protection of North-west Africa
strengthened in co-operation with Vichy France. At the same time, the
Germans, in co-operation with Italy, should launch a major offensive
against Suez, and from there advance northwards through Palestine
and Syria to Turkey.

This was nothing less than an alternative pattern for the future of
the war to that which was already forming in Hitler’s mind, and Raeder
acknowledged as much when he added that, if his plans were success-
fully carried out, *‘it is doubtful whether an advance against Russia
in the north will be necessary.” There was much to be said for his
proposals. They kept Britain in the centre of the picture as the chief
enemy, a natural conclusion for the German Naval Staff; they made
full use of Germany’s alliances with Italy and Spain, and the projected
operations were much more within the compass of German strength
than the conquest of Russia proved to be. Goering, who was normally
on the worst of terms with Raeder, strongly supported his view, and
if Hitler had appreciated the importance of sea-power he would have
recognized the force of the Admiral’s arguments.

At the time Raeder believed he had more than half convinced Hitler.
The Fuehrer showed interest in his suggestions, expressed general
agreement and undertook to discuss them with Mussolini and possibly
with Franco. Nor were these promises left unfulfilled. In the last four
months of 1940 Hitler devoted considerable time and energy to plans
for operations in the Western Mediterranean. Nore the less, Raeder
later came to the conclusion, as we have seen, that Hitler’s mind was
already firmly made up on the invasion of Russia at the time of these
September discussions, and Hiller’s interest in the Mediterranean, it
subsequently became clear, was governed by very different assumptions
from those of the German Naval Staff.

Hitler’s aims in the Mediterranean and African theatres were two-
fold. The first w^as to add to Britain’s difficulties by closing the Mediter-
ranean to her shipping and so bring adduional pressure on her to come
to terms. In other words, operations in this area were to serve the same
purpose as the continued threat of invasion and the heavy bombing

551

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

of British towns. The objectives, however, were limited: the last
thing Hitler wanted to do was to launch out on a major offensive
in the south when the concentration of troops in the east was already
beginning

Hitler’s second purpose was defensive, to safeguard North-west
Africa and the Atlantic Islands — the Cape Verde group, the Azores,
the Canaries and Madeira — against possible allied landings. He was
alive to the threat that the British, and possibly the Americans, might
turn the defensive front he had established along the western coastline
of Europe by using the Atlantic Islands as a stepping-stone to West
Africa, and Africa as the back door to Europe. The greater part of
West Africa belonged to the French colonial empire, the allegiance
of which remained uncertain. In August French Equatorial Africa had
declared for General de Gaulle, and in September the Free French,
with British support, attempted to capture Dakar. Two years later the
American and British landings in Morocco were to show that Flitler
had not been wrong in foreseeing the direction in which they would
make their attack on the “Fortress Europe.” The British were not yet
prepared to undertake such operations, but it was a common-sense
precaution on Hitler’s part to forestall them. If, at the same time, Vichy
could be persuaded to strengthen the defences of the French Empire,
so much the better.

From beginning to end, however, Hitler looked to Franco’s Spain to
undertake the mam responsibility in the western Mediterranean, and,
less hopefully, to Vichy France for the defence of North-west Africa, just
as he insisted that the burden of operations m the eastern Mediter-
ranean must fall on Italy. At no time did he contemplate the use of
German forces in anything moie than a supporting role — specialist
troops and a few squadrons of dive-bombers to assist in the capture
of Gibraltar, at the most a division or two to stiffen the Spanish and
Italian Armies. There is no evidence at all that he ever thought of the
Mediterranean as a mam theatre of operations for Germany, or that
he seriously considered Raeder’s proposals as an alternative to his
own plan for attacking Russia. What he did was to single out, against
Raeder’s advice, those parts — notably the attack on Gibraltar and its
corollary, the occupation of the Atlantic Islands — which fitted m with,
and would not disturb, his own very different view of the future of the
war. At the same time, he did all he could to secure the entry of Spain,
and if possible France as well, into the war in order to safeguard the
west and keep Britain fully occupied while he turned to the east.

Even these limited objectives proved to be beyond Hitler’s power to

552

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

achieve, largely because of the superior skill of the Spanish dictator
in avoiding the trap, into which Mussolini had fallen, of identifying
his regime too closely with a German alliance.

General Franco had first expressed his willingness to enter the war
in June, 1940, at a time w^hen it seemed likely that the war was about
to end and the division of the spoils about to begin. As the summer
wore on, however, and the capitulation or invasion of Bnlain failed to
take place, Franco’s enthusiasm cooled and he began to lay stress on
the conditions which were a prerequisite of Spanish intervention. 1 hese
included territorial claims — French Morocco, part of Algeria (OranI
and the enlargement of the Rio de Oro and Spanish Guinea — as well
as demands for large-scale economic assistance m grain and petroleum,
and the provision of military equipment. In September, 1940, Franco
sent his future Foreign Minister, Serrano Suner, to Berlin, partly in
order to allay the growing German irritation with Spam and part!>
m order to spy out the land.

Suner’s discussions with Ribbentrop set the pattern of German-
Spanish exchanges for the next six months. On the one hand, Ribben-
Irop pressed him hard for a definite date by which Spain would enter
the war; on the other, he described the Spanish demands for aid as
excessive, and W'as evasne on the question of Morocco and Spam’s
other territorial claims. In his turn, Suner avoided any definite commit-
ments and continued to insist that Spain’s demands must be met before
she could risk intervention.

Like most people who had to deal with the German Foreign Minister,
Suner took a violent dislike to Ribbentrop, to his preposterous vanity
and to his overbearing methods in trying to get his own way. Hitler
made a different impression on him. The first interview, on 17 Scp»
tember, was carefully staged. After he had passed through the portico
of the massive new Reich Chancellery, with its row of Done columns,
and crossed the vast marble gallery which stretched into the distance,
he was ushered into the Fuehrer’s presence. Hitler had assumed the
role of the ‘hvorld-historical” genius for the occasion, exhibiting the
calm confidence of the master of Europe and leaning over the maps to
demonstrate with assured gestures the ease with which he could take
Gibraltar. He gieetcd Suner with the famous magnetic stare, and walked
across the room with carefully controlled, cat-like steps. His glance
took in whole conlments, and he spoke of oiganizing Europe and
Africa as a single bloc for which he would proclaim a new Monroe
Doctrine of non-intervention. Unlike Ribbentrop, he took care neither
to utter any complaints nor to exert pressure on his visitor.

B L - .s'

553

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

For the rest of Suher’s visit everything possible was done to impress
him with the power and efficiency of the Third Reich, At the end,
exhausted and oppressed, the Spanish Minister escaped with relief to
the more congenial atmosphere of Italy. Bat before he left Suncr had
a second interview with Hitler, in which the Fuehrer, dropping the
impressive part he had played at their first meeting, displayed a child-
like pleasure in the gift Franco had sent him and astonished the Spaniard
by his lack of dignity and by the unaffected behaviour of a German
petit bourgeois. This contrast between the grandiose pretensions of the
regime and the underlying vulgarity and childishness of its rulers was
the most permanent impression which Suner carried away from his visit
to Berlin.^

From the point of view of the war nothing had been decided. When
Ribbentrop visited Rome he spoke in confident terms of Spam’s
intervention, possibly within four weeks’ time. But when Ciano saw
Hitler in Berlin on 28 September he found him in a pessimistic mood.
Hitler complained of the long list of Spanish demands: “he was not
convinced that Spain had the same intensity of will for giving as for
taking.” To promise French Morocco to Spain was to incur the risk
of the French authorities m North Africa concluding an agreement with
Britain. It would be better, Hitler believed, to leave the French in
Morocco and persuade them to defend it against the British. In any
case, the Spaniards refused to commit themselves to a precise date,
even if they were to receive all they asked for.

A week later, on 4 October, Hitler and Mussolini met on the Brenner
to review the situation. This time Hitler gave a double reason for refusing
to cede French Morocco to Spain. The first, which Ribbentrop had
already made clear to Suner, was his plan for a large German empire
m Central Africa, for winch part of the Moroccan coast would be
needed as an intermediate base. The second was his fear that such a
step would lead the French colonies m North and West Africa to join
de Gaulle. Hitler developed the corollary of his second theme, collabora-
tion With France, at some length, much to the irritation of Mussolini,
who feared that Vichy might be ingratiating itself with Hitler, and
so depriving him of his anticipated reward, the major share of the
French colonial empire. In the middle of October Mussolini wrote to
Hitler in reproachful tones of France, “w^ho thought, because she had
not fought, that she had not been beaten.” The idea of drawing France
more fully into the Axis camp, however, continued to intrigue Hitler,

^ Ci. Serrano Suftcr* Entie les Pyrenees et Gibraltar (Paris, 1948), chapter XII.

554

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

despite the Duce’s protests, and towards the end of October he resolved
to clear up his difficulties with Spam and France by a personal visit to
Franco on the Spanish frontier and a meeting with the leaders of Vichy
France on the way.

vin

Much to Hitler’s surprise, the meeting with Franco proved to be one
of the few occasions since he had become the Dictator of Germany
on which Hitler found himself worsted in a personal encounter. The
memory of his failure never ceased to vex him. For Hitler went out
of his way to flatter the Spanish leader. He put himself to the trouble
of a long journey across France and he offered Spain immediate aid
in the capture of Gibraltar. Admittedly, Hitler was unwilling to agree
to the cession of French Morocco, if only because he wanted to keep
Vichy in play. Nevertheless he was confident that with vague promises
for the future and with the impression which his dynamic personality
was bound to leave on Franco he would succeed in persuading the
Spaniards to agree to enter the war in the near future and play the part
for which he had cast them.

The two dictators met at the Spanish frontier town of Heiidaye on
23 October. Hiller began with an impressive account of the strength of
Germany’s position and the hopelessness of England’s. He then pro-
posed the immediate conclusion of a treaty, by which Spain would come
into the war in January, 1941. Gibraltar would be taken on 10 January
by the same special troops which had captured the Belgian fortress of
Eben Emael, and would at once become Spanish.

To Hitler’s mounting irritation, however, Franco appeared to be
unimpressed by all that he had just heard. Hitler completely failed to
establish that ascendancy over the Caudillo which he never failed to
exercise over the Duce. Instead Franco began to insist on Spain’s need
of economic and military assistance, and to ask awkward questions
about Germany’s ability to give either in the quantities required. He even
ventured to suggest that, if England were conquered, the British Govern-
ment and Fleet would continue the war from Canada with American
support. Barely able to control himself, Hitler at one point stood up
and said there was no point m continuing the talks, only to sit down and
renew his efforts to wm Franco over.

The departure of the trains was delayed for two hours, and Ribben-
trop stayed on until the morning to work out a draft treaty which would
satisfy the Spaniards. But neither Hitler nor Ribbentrop could get

555

WAK-LORD, 1939-1945

Franco to commit himself to anything beyond vague generalities. The
Fuehrer for once had to admit defeat, after a conversation lasting nine
hours, “rather than go through which again,” he told Mussolini, ‘‘he
would prefer to have three or four teeth taken out.” Ribbentrop, who
had missed a night’s sleep to no purpose, was even more incensed.
Racing across France to join Hitler, he spent his time in cursing “that
ungrateful coward Franco who owes us everything and now refuses to
Join us.”^

By contrast. Hitler’s interview with Petain at Montoire on the follow-
ing day appeared to go well. The aged Marshal of France was one of
the few men who ever impressed Hitler, perhaps because, like Lloyd
George, he had played a prominent part in the defeat of Germany in
1918. To Mussolini Hitler descnbed Laval as “a dirty democratic
pohtician, a man who doesn’t believe in what he says,” but for Petain
he had only praise.

Although he expressed regret about the painful circumstances in
which they met, Hitler made no attempt to disguise the difficulty of
France’s position. “Once this struggle is ended,” he told the Marshal,
“it is evident that either Fiance or England will have to bear the terri-
torial and material costs of the conflict.” When however, Petain, ex-
pressed himself ready to accept the principle of collaboration, it was
agreed that the Axis Powers and France had an identical interest in
seeing Britain defeated as soon as possible and that France should
support the measures they might take to this end. In return, Hitler
agreed that France should receive compensation for territorial losses
in Africa from Britain and be left with an empire equivalent to the one
she still possessed.-

On the surface this promised well, but ail the details remained to be
worked out, and Pelain’s comment to a friend has often been quoted:
“it will take six months to discuss this programme and another six
months to forget it.”'^

Hitler seems to have been satisfied for the moment. He told Mussolini
that he was convinced that the fight between Vichy and de Gaulle was
genuine, and that “the support of France will be of great interest and
great help to the Axis, not so much from a military point of view as
from the psychological effect which it will have on the British when they
see a compact continental bloc against England being formed.”^

^ Schmidt page 503

2 Text of the Montoire Agreement in W. L Langer Our Vichy Gamble (N.Y.,
1947), pages 94-6.

’^Fmces du Maiechal Fetain (Pans, 1945), page 313: Est^be’s evidence.

^ Ciano's Diplomatic Fapen. page 400.

556

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

The meeting with Mussolini at which this was said took place almost
immediately after Hitler had seen Franco and Fctain. Its occasion was
an item of news which took Hitler by surprise and was to prove the
turning-point m his plans for the Mediterranean and Africa,

On 28 October the Italians attacked Greece, not merely without
Hitler’s agreement, but in flat contradiction of his wishes. This was an
event which affected the whole future of the war. Its full consequences
will have to be discussed later. Here wc are concerned only with its
effects on Hitler’s interest m the southern theatre of operations.

These did not at first appear to be great. True the Italian setbacks iii
Greece faced Hitler with the prospect of having to conic to Mussolini’s
aid in the Balkans. This, and the improvement m Britain’s position as a
result of her occupation of Crete and a number of the Aegean Islands
certainly put an end to any idea of German offensive operation in the
eastern Mediterranean. Even German aid for the Italian drive on Sue/,
which was the most to which Hitler had ever agreed, was now held back;
it was only to be given, if at all, after the Italians had leached Mersa
Matruh. But the conference of 4 November and the directive of
12 November in which these decisions were embodied, confirmed the
plans for action in the western Mediterranean.

Orders were given for Operation Felix to be earned out with German
troops supporting the Spaniards in the assault on Gibraltar. To fend
off any British counter-attack, other German troops were to occupy
the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands by air, small forces were to be landed
to strengthen the Spanish defence of the Canaries, and three German
divisions were to be sent to the Spanish-Portuguesc frontier. The pos-
sibility of occupying the Azores and Madeira was also to be investigated.

In view of the uncertainties of the situation these were bold decisions.
Yet only small forces were involvid. Hitler, it soon appeared, was still
relying on Spain’s intervention, and a memorandum prepaicd by the
Naval Staff on 14 November showed how little Hiller’s plans, even at
their boldest, corresponded with the Navy’s view of wliat ought to be
undertaken m the Mediterranean. Criticizing Operation Felix as in-
sufficient, the Naval Staff argued that Germany must fight for the
African area as “the foremost strategic objective” and, at the same
time as she closed the western Mediterranean, herself launch an oiTensive
against Suez, occupy Gieece and march through Turkey.

There was never any prospect that Hitler would adopt such a plan.
Although, later, German troops occupied Greece and Crete, and led

^Operation Felix, the projected occupation of Gibraltar and the Atlantic
Islands.

557

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

the Italians in the drive for Suez, Hitler regarded all these operations
as either defensive in character or as entirely secondary to the main
theatre of war in the east. At the end of the directive of 12 November
he added that, irrespective of the results of the forthcoming discussions
with Molotov, “all preparations for the east which have been verbally
ordered will be continued.” Operation Felix was compatible with these
preparations: Raeder’s proposals were not.

Soon afterwards Operation Felix, too, had to be first postponed,
then virtually abandoned. During November Hitler pressed Franco
hard, but the Spaniards warily refused to give any definite commit-
ment and proved fertile in finding excuses. On 7 December Admiral
Canaris presented the Spanish Dictator with a proposal from Hitler
to send German troops across the frontier on 10 January and begin
operations against the British on that date. This time Franco gave Hitler
a blunt refusal. He had little confidence in the plans suggested, he replied,
which would only lead to a British or American occupation of the Atlan-
tic Islands. Nor was Spain in an economic condition to enter the war yet.
The sudden opening of the first British Desert Offensive and the victory
of Sidi Barrani in the second week of December confirmed all Franco’s
doubts. The war, it appeared, was far from over, and the Italian Army
was soon in full retreat across the desert. Forced to recognize his failure
with Franco, on 11 December Hitler issued the brief notice: ''Operation
Felix will not be carried out as the political conditions no longer
obtain.”

For a moment Hitler even feared that the British successes might
lead to the break-away of the French colonial empire under General
Weygand, and on 10 December he ordered preparations to be made for
an emergency operation, Attila, which would secure, if necessary, the
occupation of the whole of France and the capture of the French Fleet
and Air Force. Weygand made no move, but on 13 December Laval,
the advocate of collaboration, was dismissed from his office in the Vichy
Government and placed under arrest. The Germans soon secured his
release, but not his return to office, and Marshal Petain stubbornly
refused to go to Paris to receive the ashes of the Duke of Reichstadt,
Napoleon’s son, which Hitler had ordered to be sent from Vienna as a
symbolic gesture to the French. The Montoire promises of collaboration
were evidently worthless, and on Christmas Eve Hitler gave Admiral
Darlan, the Vichy Minister of Marine, a taste of his temper in an angry
interview at Beauvais. Operation Attila was not carried out, although
the troops were held in readiness to the spring of 1941. None the less

558

THE INCONCLUSIVE VICTORY, 1939-1940

Hitler had to abandon the hopes he entertained in the autumn of 1940
of winning the French over to active co-operation against the British,
and in the event Moiitoire proved to have been as much a failure as
Hendaye.

In the New Year Hitler made one final effort to persuade Franco to
come into the war, writing personally to the Caudillo on 6 February
and invoking Mussolini’s intervention as well Neither approach had
any effect. Mussolini met Franco at Bordighera on 12 February, 1941,
but, far from changing the Spanish point of view, only echoed Franco’s
complaints of Hitler’s illusions about France. Hitler’s own letter to
Franco was strongly worded.

About one thing, Caudillo [he wrote], ihcie must be clarity: are fighting a
battle of life and death and cannot at this time make any gifts. . . .

The entrance of Spain into th»s stiuggic has certainly not been conceived
of as exclusively to the benefit of German and Italian interests. . . . Spam will
never get other friends than those gi\en her in the Germany and Italy of
today, unless it becomes a different Spain. This diffeicnt Spain, however,
could only be the Spam of decline and final collapse. For this reason alone,
Caudillo, I beiie\e that wc three men,theDuce,you and I, are bound together
by the most rigorous compulsion of histoiy, and that thus we in this his-
torical analysis ought to obey as the supieme commandment the realization
that, in such difficult times, not so much an apparently wise caution as a bold
heart can save nations.^

Three weeks later Hitler received Franco’s reply. The Caudillo was
profuse in his protestations of loyalty.

“We stand today,” he wrote, ''where we have always stood You

must have no doubt about my absolute loyalty to the realization of the
union of our national destinies with those of Germany and Ilaly.”^

But he maintained that attitude of polite evasion which, throughout
the negotiations, had baffled Hitler’s clumsy efforts to pin him down,
and he still refused to commit himself.

With that Hitler had to be content. ”I fear,” he wrote to Mussolini,
“that Franco is making the greatest mistake of his life.” The Spanish
dictator, indeed, was to appear high on the list of those who disappointed
the Fuehrer by their failure to fulfil the historic role for which he had
cast them. It was a stigma which that wily politician knew how to bear
with fortitude and eventually to turn to profit.

* The Spanish Go\einment ami the Ams. pages 28-33. ® Ibid.

559

CHAPTER ELEVEN

^THE WORLD WILL HOLD
ITS BREATH’’
1940-1941

Looking back over the six months since the defeat of France,
Hitler could hardly avoid a feeling of angry frustration. The triumphs of
the summer had been frittered away in a succession of failures. The
British had refused to come to terms; the Spaniards and the French had
proved elusive and unreliable, Gibraltar remained untaken, and the
French colonial empire unsecured. Since the armistice at Compiegne
nothing had gone right in the west.

At first sight the situation in the east was scarcely more promising. It
was m the east, however, that Hitler was to recover the initiative in the
spring of 1941, sweeping the British once more into the sea, over-running
the Balkans and astonishing the world by the force of the attack which
he let loose against Russia. This is the history we have now to trace,
from Jane, 1940 to June, 1941.

In the summer of 1940 the Russians, alarmed by the extent of the
German victories in the west, had hurriedly taken advantage of Hitler’s
preoccupation to occupy the whole of their sphere of influence under the
1939 Agreement. In June Russian troops marched into the Baltic States
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and in August all three were incorpor-
ated ill the Soviet Union. The Russians followed their action m the north
by an ultimatum to Rumania at the end of June, demanding the cession
of the two provinces of Bessarabia and the Northern Bukovina. Hitler
could only advise the Rumanians to comply, but henceforward he was
determined to prevent any fuither Russian move towards the west.

Mis immediate object was to avoid the development of a situation in
the Balkans which would provide the Soviet Government with an excuse
for intervention. The danger came from Rumania’s neighbours, whose
territorial ambitions had been aroused by the Russian acquisition of

560

‘‘the world will hold its breath'’

Bessarabia. The Bulgarian claim to the South Dobiiidja was soon
settled, but the Hungarian demand for Transylvania was more than
Rumanian national pride would accept, and rclalioos between the two
Slates rapidly deteriorated to a point where war was a possibility.

Rumanian oil was essential to Germany, and Hitler could not afford
to see Russian troops occupying the oilfields in the event of the
Rumanian State disintegrating. Behind the scenes, therefore, he used his
influence to bring the Hungarians and the Rumanians into a more
reasonable frame of mind, and, when advice proved ineffecfual, Ribbeiw
trop summoned both parties to Vienna at the end of August to accept a
settlement dictated by the two Axis Powers.

Neither Hungary nor Rumania regarded the settlement as satisfactoiy.
Ribbentrop only obtained the Hungarians’ consent by shouting at them
in a threatening manner, while the Rumanian Foreign Minister, Manoil-
escu, fell across the table in a faint when he saw the line of partition
which Ribbentrop had drawn. But Hitler was indifterent to Hungarian
or Rumanian feelings. What mattered was to secure the oilfields: to
make doubly sure, he offered Rumania a guarantee of her new frontiers
and secretly ordered a force of twelve divisions to be prepared for
open intervention, if required.

The crisis, in fact, ended veiy much to Hitler’s advantage. A few days
after the Vienna Award, King Carol abdicated in favour of his son, and
General Antonescu, an admirer of the Fuehrer, became Rumanian
Prime Minister. Before the end of September Antonescu, who was soon
to become one of Hitler’s favourites, set up a dictatorship, adhered to the
Axis Pact (23 September) and ''requested” the dispatch of German
troops to help guarantee the defence of Rumania against Russia. A
secret order from the Fuelirer’s H.Q. on 20 September directed:

The Army and Air Force will send Military Missions to Rumania. To the
world theii tasks will be to guide friendly Rumania in organizing and
instructing her forces.

The real tasks — ^which must not become apparent either to the Rumanians
or to our own troops — will be:

(a) To protect the oil district against seizure by thud Powci s or desti uction.
{b) To enable the Rumanian foices to fuliil certain tasks according to a
systematic plan worked out with special legaid to Geinian interests.

(c) To prepaie for deployment, from Rumanian bases, of German and
Rumanian forces in case a wai with Soviet Russia is foiced on us.^

The reorganization of the Rumanian Army on German lines began in
the autumn of 1940, and the German Military Mission was followed by

i N D. C-.53.

561

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

German troops, including A A. regiments to protect the oilfields, and the
13th Panzer Division which was transferred for training. Hitler had soon
established a hold over Rumania as a satellite State which was not to be
shaken until the end of the war.

These German moves were far from welcome in Moscow. On
1 September Molotov summoned the German Ambassador and des-
cribed the Vienna Award as a breach of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, which
provided for previous consultation. Molotov took equal exception to
the German guarantee to Rumania, which, he pointed out, was univer-
sally taken to be directed against the U.S.S.R.

These protests, however, Hitler could affoid to discount, although he
offered a sop in the form of Russian membership of the new Danubian
Commission, from which the Soviet Union had originally been excluded.
Much more serious was the resentment with which the establishment of a
German protectorate over Rumania was received in Rome.

Mussolini had for long entertained ambitions to extend Italian influ-
ence in the Balkans and along the Danube, ambitions to which he had
always recognized the growth of German power must be a threat. It was
fear of German expansion towards the south-east which led him origin-
ally to oppose the Anschluss, and all Hitler’s fair words since had failed
to eradicate the suspicion with which he watched any German move in
the direction of the Danube or the Adriatic. Plitler was well aware of
Mussolini’s ambitions in the Balkans and of his sensitivity to German
rivalry in this area. He was also alive to the possibility of Mussolini
taking action there to forestall him. At the interview he had with Ciano
on 7 July, 1940, Hitler was at pains to impress on the Italian Minister
the need to delay any such action m the case of Yugoslavia, a country
long marked down by the Duce as an object of his imperial designs.
This warning was renewed in the succeeding weeks and extended to
Gieece, the other possible objective ofan Italian move. In both cases the
same reason was given, the danger of Balkan complications at this time —
although Hitler added that he accepted as a matter of course Mussolini’s
right to settle his claims on Yugoslavia and Greece as soon as the
situation became more settled.

These German hints were not much to the Duce’s liking — “It is a
complete order to halt all along the line,” Ciano complained. But
ostensibly the Italians agreed, and in a letter of 27 August Mussolini
assured Hitler that the measures he had taken on the Greek and Yugo-
slav frontiers were purely defensive: all the Italian resources would be
devoted to the attack on Egypt. Hitler took care to associate the Italians

562

‘‘the world will hold its breath^'

with him in the settlement imposed on Hungary and Rumania, and when
Ribbentrop visited Rome in the middle of September he repeated that
“as far as Greece and Yugoslavia are concerned it is a question of
exclusively Italian interests. . . . Yugoslavia and Greece are two zones of
Italian interest in which Italy can adopt whatever policy she sees fit
With Germany’s full support.”^ Mussolini did not conceal his intention
of attacking Greece; the Greeks, he told Ribbentrop, were to Italy what
the Norwegians had been to Germany before the April expedition. But
he spoke of it as an operation to be undertaken after Britain had been
driven out of the eastern Mediterranean.

German-Italian co-operation at this time appeared to be closer than
usual, and Mussolini readily fell in with Ribbentrop’s proposal of a new'
Tripartite Pact to be signed by Germany, Italy and Japan. Ribbentrop
had first put forward this suggestion as long ago as October, 1938, and he
repeated in September, 1940, the same arguments he had used then, the
effect such an alliance would have in strengthening isolationist opinion
in America in its opposition to Roosevelt’s policy. Ribbentrop admitted
that the Pact might also have an effect on Russia, but added that it had
now become clear that the policy of friendship with Russia could only
be pursued within well-defined limits.

At the end of September Ciano travelled to Berlin for the signature
of the Pact. Every effort was made to impress its importance on
the minds of a people who were becoming more sceptical as the war
entered on its second year, and the ceremony was given the utmost
publicity by the German propaganda machine. A week later another
meeting between the Fuehrer and the Duce on the Brenner Pass appeared
to confirm the solidarity of the Axis partnership.

“Rarely,” Ciano wrote in his journal, “have I seen the Duce in such
good humour as at the Brenner today. The conversation was cordial and
the conversations were certainly the most interesting of all so far. Hitler
put at least some of his cards on the table and talked to us about his plans
for the future Hitler was energetic and again extremely anti-Bolshev-

ist. ‘Bolshevism,’ he said, ‘is the doctrine of people who are lowest in
the scale of civilization’,”^ What Hitler did not mention, how'ever, was
the steps he was already taking to secure Genua n control over Rumania.

When the movement of German troops became known during the
next week, Mussolini’s anger at Hitler’s duplicity showed how fragile
were the bonds of confidence between the two regimes. Once again the
Italian dictator felt that Hitler had stolen a march on him. Belated

^Ciano’s Minute, 19 September, 1940; Cwuo*s Diplomatic Papers, pages 389-93.

* Ciano' s Diary, pages 259-6.

563

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

attempts to send an Italian contingent as well were unsuccessful, and the
indignant Duce burst out to Ciano:

Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli. This time I am going to pay him
back in his own com. He will find out from the newspapers that I have
occupied Greece. In this way the equilibrium will be re-established, . , , I
shall send m my resignation as an Italian if anyone objects to our fighting
the Greeksd

On 15 October, little more than a fortnight after the Axis partnership
had been ostentatiously strengthened by the Tripartite Pact, Mussolini
issued orders to prepare for an attack on Greece m deliberate disloyalty
to his own assurances to the Germans and m the same childish mood of
pique which had led to the occupation of Albania as a tit-for-tat after
Hitler’s match into Prague.

This time the consequences were more serious. The role which Hitler
had assigned the Italian^forces in his strategic plan was the invasion of
Egypt, and on 13 September the Italian Army under Graziam had
crossed the Egyptian frontier and begun a slow advance eastwards.
Even against the scanty British forces opposing them this soon proved
to be a task demanding all the resources Mussolini could command, and
Marshal Badogho, the Chief of the Italian General Staff, was firmly set
against any extension of Italy’s commitments. Mussolini refused to
listen: his sorely bruised vanity demanded a bold coup to restore Fascist
prestige, and early on 28 October Italian troops began the invasion of
Greece from Albania.

Not until the last minute was Mussolini willing to inform Hitler of his
intention. A long letter written on 19 October did not reach Berlin until
the 24th and was only communicated to Hitler personally late that night
after his interview with Petain at Montoire. He did not need to look at
a map to realize the implications of Mussolini’s mo\c. At precisely
the moment when he had succeeded in pacifying the Balkans by the
virtual occupation of Rumania, the Italians w'ere about to set the whole
peninsula in turmoil again by their ill-timed attack. Bulgaria and Yugo-
slavia, both with claims on Greece, were bound to be aroused; Russia
would be provided With a fiiither pretext for intervention, while the
British would almost certainly land m Greece and acquire bases on the
European shores of the Mediterranean On top of his unsatisfactory
interview with Franco on the 23rd the news from Rome strained Hitler’s
temper to the limit Yet the manner in which Mussolini had acted was a
clear enough indication of the resentment be felt at high-handed be-
^ Claud's Diat}\ page 297.

564

“the world will hold its breath’*

haviour by the Germans, and Hitler, quick to see the danger of alienating
his one reliable ally after his failure to bring Spain into the war, for once
hesitated to intervene too forcefully. He resolved to go to Italy in the
hope that a personal appeal to the Duce before the attack began might
persuade him to change his mind.

A meeting was hurriedly arranged at Florence, and the Fuehrer’s
special train, in which he had journeyed to the Spanish frontier, was re-
routed to the south, passing through a snowy landscape which, Paul
Schmidt remarks, corresponded well with the chilly mood of those inside.
Two hours before he reached Florence Hitler was informed that Italian
troops had begun the assault that morning, and Mussolini, smirking
with self-satisfaction, could not wait to leave the station platform
before announcing his first successes.

It is an interesting sidelight on Hitler’s character that, in such provoca-
tive circumstances, he controlled himself without difficulty and through-
out the talks which followed m the Pitti Palace showed no trace of his
real feelings. On the contrary, he began by offering the Duce Germany’s
full support in the new campaign and placed German parachute troops
at his disposal if they should be required for the occupation of Crete. He
followed this with a long report to his Italian partner on his negoti-
ations with Spain and Vichy France — clever tactics m view of Mussolini’s
suspicion of France — and ended with a belated but reassuring account
of his relations with Rumania. At the conclusion of his report Ciano
wrote, evidently with some i elief : ‘The meeting ends with the expression
of the perfect agreement between Italy and Germany on ail points.”^
Hitler had preserved appearances, but his actions on returning to
Germany show that he had no illusions about the problems with which
the Italians’ blunder confronted him. New orders, discussed during the
first ten days of November, were issued in the directive of 1 2 November.-
Although the dispatch of German forces to the support of the Italian
drive on Suez was to be considered only after the Italians had reached
Mersa Matruh, provision was made for the rapid transfer of a German
armoured division to North Africa if necessary. Meanwhile the German
forces m Rumania were to be reinforced, and an Army Group of ten
divisions assembled to march into Greek Thrace if the need should arise.
Hitler still hoped to be able to carry Operation Felix out against Gib-
raltar, but it IS evident that he anticipated trouble in the Balkans, cither
from British air attacks on Rumania or from an Italian failure in
Greece, and was already making preparations to meet it in advance.

^ Oano’s Minute, Ciano' s Diplomatic Papers^ 399-404.

» N.D. 444-PS.

565

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Hitler, moreover, had to look still further ahead. Perhaps the most
significant paragraph in the directive of 12 November is the instruction,
a! ready quoted, “to continue ail pi eparations for the east already verbally
ordered.” The plans for an attack ofi Russia, on which the Army General
Staff had been engaged since August, were now taking shape. During the
intervening period, while the forces needed were being collected in the
east, Hitler was most anxious to prevent the Balkans becoming a main
theatre of war, partly to avoid delays in his own preparations, and partly
to deny the Russians any opportunity for intervening before he was
ready to attack them. While his immediate anxiety, therefore, was the
possibility of a British landing in Greece and an Italian collapse, he was
bound to view any action he might be obliged to take in the context of
his larger design.

Russian suspicions had already been aroused, not only by the guarantee
given to Rumania, but also by renewed German interest in Finland, at
the other end of the potential Eastern Front. Towards the end of
September, an agreement was reached betv/een the German and Finnish
Governments for the movement of German troops through Finland to
the outlying garrisons in northern Norway. When the German Charge
d’ Affaires in Moscow called on Molotov on 26 September to offer
assurances about the Tripartite Pact to be signed the next day, he was
pressed by the Soviet Foreign Minister to provide a copy of the agree-
ment recently concluded between Germany and Finland, “including its
secret portions.” The Geiman Foreign Office at once complied with the
Russian request, but Molotov was not satisfied, asking for more mforma-
tioii about the agreement and about the dispatch of a German Military
Mission to Rumania. Anxious to allay Russian fears, Ribbentrop there-
upon took the step of proposing a further meeting between Molotov and
himself, and in a letter to Stalin, dated 13 October, suggested that
Molotov should visit Berlin. After a week’s consideration Stalin accepted
the invitation, and it was agreed that Molotov should come to Berlin in
the first half of November. The extension of the war to the Balkans in the
meantime, and the possibility of German intervention in Greece — ^which
would necessitate the passage of German troops through Bulgaria —
added to the importance of the Soviet Foreign Minister’s visit.

Molotov arri\cd in the German capital on 12 November, and after a
preliminary talk with Ribbentrop was received by Hitler the same day.
566

‘'the world will hold its breath’’

The Fuehrer at once placed the discussion on the most lofty plane; "In
the life of peoples it was indeed difficult to lay down a course for develop-
ment over a long period in the future, and the outbreak of conflicts was
often strongly influenced by personal factors; he believed nevertheless
that an attempt had to be made to fix the development of nations, even
for a long period of time, in so far as that was possible, so that friction
could be avoided and the elements of conflict precluded so far as was
humanly possible. This was particularly in order when two nations such
as the German and Russian nations had at their helm men who possessed
sufficient authority to commit their countries to a development m a
definite direction. . .

The occasion for such a settlement was the approaching and final
defeat of Great Britain.

After the conquest of England, the British Empire would be apportioned as
a gigantic world-wide estate in bankruptcy of forty million square kilo-
metres. In this bankrupt estate there would be foi Russia access to the ice-
free and really open ocean. Thus far, a minority of forty-five million English-
men had ruled the six hundred million inhabitants of the British Empire,
He was about to crush this minority. . . . Under these circumstances there
arose world-wide perspectives. ... All the countries which could possibly
be interested in the bankrupt estate would have to stop all controversies
among themselves and concern themselves exclusively with the partition of
the British Empire.

To this main theme of the division of the British Empire Hitler added
a second, the exclusion of the U.S.A., which was seeking to establish
itself as Britain’s heir. A new Monroe Doctrine must be erected to keep
her out.

These were the "world perspectives” with which Hitler sought to
dazzle his Russian guest. It was left to Ribbenlrop to discuss the details,
a task which he carried out with singular lack of tact, trying to rush
Molotov into accepting a draft treaty before his visitor had had any
chance to examine what he was being asked to agree to. The result, as
anybody but Ribbentrop might have foreseen, was to increase the resis-
tance of the Russian Foreign Minister, who was the last person to let
himself be carried away by this barnstorming diplomacy.

Ribbentrop’s proposals were contained in a draft agreement and tw^o
draft protocols which he offered to Molotov on the second day of his
visit. The agreement was to be concluded between Germany, Italy and
Japan on the one side, and the U.S.S.R. on the other; its purpose w^as to

^ The German minutes of Molotov’s conversations in Berlin were captured at the
end of the war and are printed in Nazi-Soviet JRelathns, pages 217-58, fiom which all
the following quotations are taken.

567

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

associate the Soviet Union with the Tripartite Pact. The core of the
treaty was Article U, an undertaking to respect each other’s natural
spheres of influence (including “the present extent of the possessions of
the U.S.S.R.”), and Article III, a further undertaking to join no combin-
ation directed against any of the Four Powers.

The significance of the proposed treaty was made clear by the two
accompanying protocols, both of which were to remain secret. The first
defined the Four Powers’ spheres of influence.

Germany declares that, apart from terntoriai revisions in Europe to be
carried out at the conclusion of peace, her territorial aspirations centre in
the territories of Central Africa.

Italy declares that, apart from territorial rewsions m Europe, her terri-
torial aspirations centre in the territories of northern and north-eastern
Africa,

Japan declares that her territorial aspirations centre m the area of eastern
Asia to the south of the Island Empire of Japan.

The Soviet Union declares that its territorial aspirations centre south
of the national territory of the U.S.S.R. in the direction of the Indian Ocean.

The Four Pov/ers declare that, reserving the settlement of specific
questions, they will mutually respect these teriitonal aspirations and will
not oppose their achievement.

If he could persuade Molotov and Stalin to accept such a settlement,
Ribbentrop believed that he would be able to divert Russia from her
historic expansion towards Europe, the Balkans and the Mediter-
ranean — areas in which she was bound to clash with Germany and
Italy — southwards to areas such as the Persian Gulf and the Indian
Ocean, where Germany had no interest and where Russia would at once
become embroiled with the British. It was a bold but transparent pro-
posal which cut right across both the traditions and the interests of
Russia. Ribbentrop hoped, however, to make it more atlracti\e by the
second protocol, which promised German and Italian co-operation in
detaching Turkey from her commitments to the West and winning her
over to collaboration with the new' bloc of Powers. As a part of this
process, Ribbentrop proposed a new regime for the Straits to replace
the Montreux Convention. In addition, the Gemian Foreign Minister
spoke in vague but tempting terms of Geniian help m securing for
Russia a Non-Aggression Pact with Japan, as a result of which Japan
might be persuaded to recognize the Soviet spheres of influence in
Outer Mongolia and Sinkiang and to do a deal over the island of
Sakhalin, with its valuable coal and oil resources.

568

“the world will hold its breath”

Such were the German proposals, characteristic of Hitler alike in their
boldness and their vagueness. It would be difficult to think of anyone less
likely to be impressed by them than Molotov, a cold and stubborn
negotiator, precise to the point of pedantry. In equally characteristic
fashion, he met Hitler’s attempts to bewitch him with these glimpses
into the future by turning to ask a series of pointed questions about
German-Russian co-operation in the present*

Foreseeing that the Russians were likely to raise such issues as Finland
and the Balkans, Hitler made some effort to forestall them by admitting
that the necessities of war had obliged Germany to intervene in areas
where she had no permanent interests. ‘'Thus, for instance,” he told
Molotov, “Germany has no political interests whatsoever in the Balkans
and is active there at present exclusively under the compulsion of se-
curing for herself certain raw materials.”

This attempt to ride off Molotov’s questions in advance proved futile.
The Russian Foreign Minister, stolidly refusing to be diverted, pursued
his enquiries in a systematic manner, beginning with Finland.

Hitler accepted the fact that Finland was a part of the Russian sphere
of influence as defined at Moscow, but he insisted that for the duration
of the war Germany had economic interests in Finland’s nickel and
lumber which she expected to be considered. At the same time he
pointed out that Germany had lived up to her side of the Agreement,
while Russia had occupied the Northern Bukovina and part of Lith-
uania, neither of which had been mentioned in the Agreement at ail
Germany accepted these revisions because they were in Russia’s
interests; she expected Russia to show the same consideration for her
temporary interests in Finland and Rumania. This was an argument
which Molotov was not prepared to admit, and a sharp exchange fol-
lowed. Hitler obviously made a determined effort to control his temper,
but he was nettled by Molotov’s persistence. As soon as he could he
seized an opportunity to bring the discussion back to the less dangerous
and more attractive theme of the partition of the British Empire.

Once again Molotov sat impassively while the Fuehrer used all his
skill to distract his attention. But as soon as Hitler finished, Molotov
resumed where he had left off: the next question was the Balkans and
the German guarantee to Rumania, “aimed against the interests of
Soviet Russia, if one might express oneself so bluntly.” With mounting
impatience Hitler went over the familiar ground again : Gemnany had no
permanent interests in the Balkans, wartime needs alone had taken her
there, the guarantee was not directed against Russia, and so on.

569

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

If Germany would not revoke her guarantee to Rumania, Molotov
then asked, what would she say to a Russian guarantee to Bulgaria?
Hitler was at once on his guard. “The question would first arise whether
Bulgaiia had asked for a guarantee. He did not know of any such
request by Bulgaria.” When Molotov pressed him, Hitler refused to
commit himself, although he conceded that Germany, as a Danubian
Power, was only indirectly interested in the passage into the Black Sea,
adding ominously that “if she were looking for sources of friction
with Russia she would not need the Straits.”

With this, Hitler’s part in the talks ended, leaving him in a state of
violent irritation. Franco had only angered him by evasion, Molotov
had answered back and argued with him, a liberty which Hitler never
forgave and which had already cost others their lives. That night he was
not present at the banquet which Molotov gave to his hosts in the
Russian Embassy, but Ribbentrop, who had his final conversation with
Molotov m the air-raid shelter during a British air raid, brought back
further reports which only added to Hitlei’s determination to settle
with the Russians in his own w'ay as soon as possible.

At this last meeting Molotov made it unmistakably clear that Russia
was not prepared to disinterest herself in Europe. Not only Turkey and
Bulgaria,

but the fate of Rumania and Hungary was also cf interest to the Soviet
Union and could not be immaterial toherunder any circumstances. It would
fui ther interest the Soviet Government to learn what the Axis contemplated
wUh regard to Yugoslavia and Greece, and likewise what Germany intended
With regard to Poland. . . , The Soviet Government was also interested m
the question of Swedish neutrality . . . and the question of the passages out
of the Baltic Sea. The Soviet Government believed that discussions must be
htid concerning this question similar to those now being conducted
concerning the Danubian Commission.

Ribbentrop, complaining that he had been “queried too closely” by
Ills Russian colleague, made one last effort to pull the conversation
back to the agenda winch he had proposed. “He could only repeat again
and again that the decisive question was whether the Soviet Union was
prepared and in a position to co-operate with us in the great liquidation
of the Bulish Empire. . . But Ribbentrop’s last exasperated plea met
with no more response than Hitler’s. To Ribbentrop’s repeated assur-
ances that Britain was finished Molotov replied: “If that is so, why are
we in this shelter and whose are these bombs which fall?”^ “M. Molotov
had to state,” the Gennan Minute ends, “that all these great issues of

^ Stalin’s account to Mr. Churchill m Moscow, Churchill: voL !!, page 518.

570

"*THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH’’

tomorrow could not be separated from the issues of today and the fulfib
ment of existing agreements. The things that were started must first be
completed before they proceeded to new tasks.”

In fact, Stalin’s reaction to Ribbentrop’s proposals was not so iiegati\e
as Molotov suggested. On 25 November, less than a forlnighr after
Molotov’s visit to Berlin, the Soviet Government sent an official reply
accepting Ribbentrop’s suggested Four-Power Pact, on condition that the
Germans agreed to a number of additional demands. These included the
immediate withdrawal of German troops from Finland; a mutual assist-
ance pact between Russia and Bulgaria, including the grant of a base for
Russian land and naval forces within range of the Straits; a finther
Russian base to be gianted by Turkey on the Bosphorus and Daidan-
elles, and Japan’s renunciation of her rights to coal and oi! concessions^
in northern Sakhalin. Provided these claims were accepted, Russia was
prepared to sign the Pact, rewriting the definition of her own sphere of
expansion to make its centre the area south of Baku and Baliim m the
general direction of the Persian Gulf.^

No reply was ever sent to the Soviet counter-proposals, despite
lepeated enquiries from Moscow and German assurances that the
Russian Note was being studied. Once the diplomatic manoeuvre
designed to divert Russia away from Europe had failed, Hitler had no
further interest m continuing negotiations.

The precise purpose of the proposals put forward during Molotov’s
visit remains uncertain. They may well have been no more than an
elaborate camouflage with which Hitler hoped to decei\e the Russians
while he completed his preparations for attacking them. They may
perhaps have been an attempt on Ribbentrop’s part to find an alter-
native to war with Russia, to which Hitler agreed in the belief that they
could do no harm and might well serve to fool Stalin and Molotov about
his real intentions. It is difficult to believe that, so far as Hitler wus con-
cerned, they can ever have represented a serious suggestion for the
future of German-Russian relations. For this he had other plans, and if
he still entertained any doubts about giving the order to prepare for
Operation Barbarossa before Molotov’s visit he had none left after it.
Immediately after his final talk with Molotov Hitler sa’sv Goering and
told him of his intention to attack Russia in the spring. Goering, wlio
supported Raeder’s view that Germany’s first object should be to clear
the British out of the Mediterranean, attempted to dissuade Hitler, but
his arguments made no impression.

^ Russian Note in Nazi-SoMct Relatiom^ pages 258-9.

571

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Hitler was now able to reinforce his determination to invade Russia
and thus secure Germany’s future Lebensraum in the east, by the argu-
ment, of which he soon convinced himself, that Russia was preparing to
attack Germany. Russian objections to German intervention in Finland
and the Balkans were twisted into evidence of a Russian intention to
cut off German iron-ore supplies from Sweden and oil supplies from
Rumania. From this it was only a step to postulating the existence of an
agreement between Russia and Great Britain. Thus Germany was once
more threatened with encirclement, and Hitler was able to adopt the
indignant attitude of the innocent man driven to defend himself. This
was the pretext he used to justify his action to the German people in the
proclamation published on the morning of the attack in June, 1941 ;
this was the defence repeated again and again by Hitler’s lieutenants at
the Nuremberg Trials. The captured German documents tell another
story, of the systematic preparation of a deliberate act of aggression
on a people whose Government to the last day was only anxious to
restore the co-operation which had been established by the Pact of
August, 1939.

Ill

The history of the preparatory measures for Operation Barbarossa is
complicated by Hitler’s simultaneous preparation of operations in the
Balkans, forced on him by Mussolini’s blunder in invading Greece.

In a letter which he wrote to Mussolini on 20 November, 1940, Hitler
told the Duce frankly that he had come to Florence in the hope of dis-
suading him from an attack on Greece at that time, and that the conse-
quences of the Italian action were grave. The reluctance of Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia, Turkey and Vichy France to commit themselves had been
fortified; Russian alarm about the Balkans and the Straits had been
increased, while Britain had been given the opportunity to secure bases
in Greece from which to bomb Rumania and southern Italy.

The measures with which Hitler proposed to meet these difficulties
were comprehensive. Spain must come into the war at once and, with
limited German help, seize Gibraltar and guarantee North-west Africa.
Russia must be turned away from the Balkans, Turkey persuaded to
stop any threats against Bulgaria, Yugoslavia induced to collaborate
With the Axis against Greece, and Rumania pressed to accept German
reinforcements. To these political tasks, Hitler added increased air
attacks on the British Navy and its bases in the eastern Mediterranean,
572

“THE WORLD WILL HOLD ITS BREATH”

in which the German Air Force would assist the Italians. The German
squadrons must, however, be sent back by 1 May at the latest, and land
operations against Egypt would have to be abandoned for the time being.
The principal military effort would go into a German attack to clear the
British out of Thrace, which could be mounted by March, 1941, but
not before.

Mussolini’s comment on reading Hitter’s letter was brief: “He has
really smacked my fingers.” In his reply, however, he accepted Hitler’s
proposals.

Ciano, who had seen Hitler at the Berghof a few days before, reported
that Hitler was genuinely worried about the situation created by Musso-
lini’s blunder, but became more cheerful when Ciano agreed to negoti-
ations to win over Yugoslavia, the other object of Mussolini's ambitions.

Hitler obviously regarded an arrangement with Yugoslavia as the key
to the Balkan situation; nor was he far wrong in this, since it was the
unexpected and heroic action of the Yugoslavs at the end of March,
1941, which did more than anything else to throw his plans awry.

When Ciano saw him at Vienna on 20 November Hitler was still full of
Yugoslavia, and, satisfied the Duce would now agree, he declared:
“From this city of Vienna, on the day of the Anschluss, I sent Mussolini
a telegram to assure him that I could never forget his help. 1 confirm it
today, and I am at his side with all my strength.”^ There were tears in
his eyes as he spoke; this time even Ciano was embarrassed by the
Fuehrer’s mock-heroics.

Meanwhile Hitler was engaged in securing the political prerequisites
for his intervention in Greece. A succession of Balkan rulers was
imperiously summoned to Germany: King Boris of Bulgaria on 17
November; then the Rumanian dictator. General Antonescu, and at the
end of the month, Cinkar-Marcovitch, the Yugoslav Foreign Minister
On 5 December Hitler wiote again to Mussolini. Yugoslavia and Bul-
garia were proving difficult— the latter under Russian pressure— but he
had hopes of bringing them over, and Mussolini was much relieved at
the more confident tone of the letter.

Unfortunately for Mussolini, the degree of Fascist incompetence had
not yet been fully revealed. On 7 December the Italian Ambassador,
newly returned from Rome, saw Ribbentrop and begged for immediate
help to relieve the situation m Albania where the Italians were in danger
of a complete rout. When Hitler received the Ambassador the next day
and asked for an early meeting with the Duce, Mussolini refused to face
him To add to the Duce’s troubles, the Battle of Sidi Barrani, which
1 Ciano's Diaiy, page 309.

573

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

began on 9 December, led to the collapse of the Italian threat to Egypt
and the headlong retreat of Graziani’s forces back across Libya.

In this crisis Hitler kept his head. He refused to be diverted from his
main objectives. Between 10 December and 19 December he issued a
series of orders which were designed not only to prop up his failing
Italian ally, but to carry out his long-range plans. Undeterred by the set-
backs in Albania and North Africa, he chose this moment to draw up
the first major directive for the invasion of Russia in six months’ time.

On 10 December Hitler ordered formations of the German Air Force
to be moved to the south of Italy, from where they were to attack
Alexandria, the Suez Canal and the Straits between Sicily and Africa.
Preparations w^ere also to be pushed forward for the dispatch of an
armoured division to Libya.

On 13 December Directive No. 20 for the invasion of Greece (Opera-
tion Marita) was issued. A German task force was to be formed in
Rumania ready to thrust across Bulgaria as soon as favourable weather
came, and to occupy the Thracian coast of Greece. A maximum of
twenty-four divisions was to be committed, and these were to be ready
for use in a new undertaking as soon as the operation was completed.
The first objective was to deny the British air bases in Thrace, from which
they could bomb Rumania and Italy, but if necessary the operation was
to be extended to the occupation of the whole of the Greek mainland.
On 18 December Hitler signed Directive No. 21 for Barbarossa :

The German Aimed Foices must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia m a
quick campaign even before the end of the war against England. For this
purpose the Army will have to employ all available units with the reser-
vation that the occupied territories must be safeguarded against surprise
attack. , . .

Preparations lequiring more time to start are to be begun now — ^if this
has not yet been done— and are to be completed by 15 May, 1941. . .
The ultimate objective of the operation is to establish a defence line against
Asiatic Russia from a line running approximately from the Volga River to
Archangel.^

Hitler had already approved the plans prepared by the Army, and the
new Directive did not need to go into detail. It made it perfectly clear,
however, that from the beginning the active co-operation of Finland,
Hungary and Rumania was counted on, and this same month of
December both the Chief of the Finnish General Staff and the Hungarian
Mmibler of War visited Gennany. General Aiitonescu, who had already

1 N.D 446-PS.

574

*‘the world will hold its breath'’

in Hitler in November, came to Berchtesgaden a second time in
nuary, 194L

Finally, on 19 December, Hitler saw the Italian Ambassador and
omised increased economic aid for Italy, on condition that German
perts should go to Italy and advise on its use. In return more Italian
)rkmeii were to be sent to Germany. This was one more step in the
luction of Italy to the status of a German satellite.

With these measures put in tram Hitler was confident that he could
aster the crisis and still be ready for the attack on Russia by 15 May,
s date fixed for the completion of preparations. He said nothing of
ch a possibility to Mussolini, but the letter which he wrote to the Ducc
i the last day of 1940 w^as cordial in tone and made no reference to the
:riiiiinations he had darted at the unfortunate Italian Ambassador
rlier in the month.

Duce,

At the moment when this year comes to an end I feci the need to express to
you, from the bottom of my heait, my good wishes for the }ear about to
dawn, I feel the more compelled to give this proof of friendship since i
imagine that recent events have perhaps lost you the suppoit of manv
people, unimportant in themselves, but whose attitude has made you moic
sensitive to the genuine comradeship of a man who feels himself bound to
you alike m good or bad times, in adversity as much as in piospcrity.^

"ter this not altogether felicitous opening Hitler did his best to co-
urage Mussolini and to assure him of his own unshaken confidence in
e future. He ended by offering to meet him whenever the Duce foil it
be necessary.

Early in the New Year the chiefs of the three Services were summoned
the Berghof, where a w^ar council lasting two days was held, on 8-9
nuary, 1941. Hitler reviewed what could be done for Italy, and this
nc ordered a force of two and half divisions to be made ready for
rvice with the Italians in Albania. The need for its use there never
ose, but within the limits of what could be spared Hiller was obviously
ixious to do what he could to aid Mussolini.

Hitler's general mood was still one of confidence.

The Fuehrer [the Minutes record], is finnly convinced that the situation in
Europe can no longer develop unfavourably for Germany even if we should
lose the whole of North Africa. . . . The British can hope to win the war
only by beating us on the Continent, The Fuehrer is convinced that this is
impossible.®

^ Iliiie} e Mussolini, page 83.

® Fucker Conjaences on Nmai AffaiiSy 1941, pages 12 13.

575

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Britain, Hitler concluded, only went on fighting because of the hopes
she entertained of American and Russian intervention, and he described
Stalin as '‘a coM-blooded blackmailer who would, if expedient, repudiate
any written treaty at any time.”

Ten days later Mussolini visited the Berghof. He was most reluctant
to make the journey and went on board the tram in a bad temper.
Smarting under the humiliations of Libya and Greece, he looked forward
without relish to the Germans’ patronizing condolences. To the Duce’s
and Ciano’s surprise Hitler behaved with tact and impressed both of
them with the cordiality of his greeting. When the tram pulled up in the
village station of Puch, Hitler was there in person on the snow-covered
platform. The Italians were at once driven up into the mountains, and
spent two days as Hitler’s guests at the Berghof.

Mussolini found Hitler in a very anti-Russian mood, and Ribbentrop
called a sharp halt to lil-timed Italian attempts to improve their relations
with Moscow. On the second day of the visit, Monday, 20 January,
Hitler made a speech of two hours on his coming intervention in Greece
which much impressed the Italian military men by the grasp of technical
matters it displayed. The Fuehrer’s exposition ranged over the whole of
Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Demonstrating his points with
expressive gestures on the map, he impressed upon his audience the
pictuie of a master of strategy who had foreseen every possibility and
who was in complete command of the situation. He did not reveal his
intention of attacking Russia, but he did not conceal his intense distrust
of his nominal ally.

Though we have very favourable political and economic agi cements with
Russia, I prefer to rely on the powerful means at my disposal. ... As long
as Stalin lives, there is probably no danger; he is intelligent and careful.
But should he cease to be there, the Jews, who at present occupy only second-
and third-iank positions, might mo\c up again into the first-rank. The
Russians are continiialiy trying to woik [out new demands which they
read Into the agreements. ... It is therefore necessary to keep a constant
eye on the Russian factor and to keep on guard by means of strength and
clever diplomacy.*®-

Mussolini returned not oni> reiie\ed by hts reception, but — so Ciano
reported — in the mood of elation which a meeting with Hitler frequently
produced in him. Alfien, the Italian Ambassador m Berlin, who had
accompanied the party, was less sure Mussolini, he believed, was pro-
foundly resentful at the position of dependence m winch he now found
himself placed.

576

^ Hitler’s speech, N.D. C-i34.

"‘THL Vyh.slD Will » KS

Hitler’s conce.i!riciii of Ijs plan^ for B.^thuros.sa, daring !r , talks
with Mussolinij has already been remarl cd. Ii coviJ, of cr i'>e, be
argued that It: ly was in no pOiiti‘n in 19-11 :o ^ne an} IvAn vi all
in llie operation s ..bout begm L slo^ !i E <"one. Be' br > i igumcnl
could ceriaiiily not be ap^-icd b^ the vccond of Hi b '“’s pan in
the Tnpailitc Fact, Japan, who'^c relations with Lie b.S-S.R. h:ul
balanced precanoihly on the edge cf ^ sinev the JuO mesc mvr ion
of Manchiir’vi in 1931. For tas, }ear ujan and i^ussai iiad eyed cech
other with iiiuluni .^uspiCiOi ard hosUlny. Yet HiJci nride no cfioil io
bring Japan into the war he was proposing lo wage against Russia; cm
the conimry, lie did eserylhirglic ca tkl io cfi\ t b..r awa} ftoni RussLd‘-
Far Easiern tenitories toward.^ the ‘outn.

From beginning io the Japanese shooed iiiW. i .serve iii t^icir
dcaiirgs wath the Tbu'd Reich, ft hr 1 laken Rtblz-ntsop a lory time to
secure the Japanese allunee, which h: ? ^ >rdv\i a*, o ie of his Ji 'si na - tic
masterpieces, and i v.s only ur !cr die mr l.uo. of the Clean >n
victories of 1940 iliat the J/i|mi'ese w^re hn/UgM to s'mi ii c 'fiiparlpe
Pact In Februai*}/, FM, Rdf si Sop i.jvited the j..pji.e e ^s.dor,
Oshnna, to !i s coimtr> cRatc at Fi cld and liad a talk vot i him < n
the future of Genaan-Iapane e co-operati'si. FolUn i ig i.o, oi 5
March, Hiller issued his Basic OiOcr No. 24, “'Regaidin^ CifiLiboraiioo
with ifapaii ” Fmahy, at the end of die n\ adi, the JaraiiCjC burcigii
Minister, Matsuola, \3 ned Berhr ard hiul a nmnlci orcoiivematiuns
With Hitler and Ribbcmroo From ihesc records it is possible lo ic-
ccnstriici the pr^bvV which Hitler was inging on his Japciesc ahics in
the spring of 194!

Hitler wanted Japan to enter the war at tl c carliswt pos'^eA niomeiit,
but it was again a England, not ag r'st Russia, that hr w)uuht her
co-operation. The war in lairupe, Hider .nJ Ribbcntrop assured
Matsuoka, vms siAually o\cn it w:"^ oa*y a ^pi,.sti05i of time bcfo.c
Britain wm forced to admit that she had been defeated. An aitack !)y
Japan upon Singapore would not only have a dccishe effect in cmi-
viBcmg Britain linu ‘htre v/a% no further poin^ in contirs »;g tl e war, it
would al .0 pro\ Je (he key i 'i tl r lu *’/aiion of Juparese aiiibeions in
Eastern Asia al n Imie when cl'ciansninccs fotmed a unfaie combin-
ation in lies’ fivour. 'The^e e-nild never in lioman ssiici^inaiiopf’ Ilider
told Maisuoka, '"be a better condition for a joint efiurl oi' Jie Tripartite
Pact countries than (he one which had now been pi Faced. . . . Sicli a
moment would iie\er return, it was unique in hi' ^^ry. . .

mntler-Matsiioka meeting of 27 March, iV41, A/aa-Sfnie/ Rdatwm^ pace'
289-98,

57 ?

WAk“i OivC, 1939- i9“}5

Hitler admitted that there were risks, but he dismissed them as slight.
England had her hands full and was in no position to defend her
possessions in Asia. America was not yet ready, and an attack on
Singapore would strengthen the tendency towards non-intervention
m the United States. If, none the less, America should attack Japan it
would show that such a course had already been decided on. In that
case, Japan could rely on German support. As for Russia, Hiller for-
bade any mention of his intention to invade the U.S.S.R., but he allov/ed
Ribbentrop to hint at the preparations Germany was making in the east,
and to give an explicit assurance that Germany would at once attack
Russia if she moved against Japan. “The Fuehrer was convinced,”
Ribbentrop added, “that in case of action against the Soviet Union
there would m a few months be no more Great Power of Russia.”^

In ail their conversations Hitler and Ribbentrop persistently urged on
Matsuoka the importance of an attack on Singapore at the earliest
possible date. “Japan would best help the common cause,” Ribbentrop
declared, “if she did not allow herself to be diverted by anything from
the attack on Singapore,” and he asked the Japanese Foreign Minister
for maps of the British base, “so that the Fuehrer, who must ceitainly be
considered the greatest expert of modern times on military matters,
could advise Japan as to the best method for the attack on Singapore.”'^
japan, in short, was to play in the Far East the role for winch Hitler had
cast Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy: the capture of Singapore
was the Far Eastern version of the capture of Gibraltar and the drive on
Suez.

Had Hitler succeeded in persuading his allies to fall in with his plans,
Britain’s strength would have been stretched to the limit. This time it was
not his strategy but his diplomacy that was at fault. Between the defeat
of France and the attack on Russia, Hitler conducted a considerable
number of diplomatic negotiations: it is a striking fact that, m every case
where he was unable to use the threat of force if his wishes were not met,
these negotiations failed. Spain, liaiy, Vichy France and now Japan, all
in one way or another preferred to go their several ways, and chose
different paths from those the Fuehrer had mapped out for them. It is
not difficult lo see wity. Hitler’s overbearing manner and Ms total
inability to co-operate with anyone on equal terms; Ribbentrop’s belief
that the most effective method of diplomacy was to nag and, if possible,
to threaten, produced in most of their visitors only a feeling of relief

^ Ribbentrop- ’vtatsuoka, 27 M irch, 1941; N.S R pages 281-8.

® Ribbentrop-Matsuoka, 29 iMaich, 1941, ibid , pages 303-11.

578

'‘IHE WORLD V/li I Hwl t> flS ERLAlli'"

when tlie interview came to an end. No one who Inu, read through even
the German records of these conversations v.ould evei be surprised that
they failed. It was too patent on every occasion why the Gormans wanted
what they were askmg for, loo obvious v/ho was lo benefit from it. Ciano
was no doubt a prejudiced witness, but he was right when he wrote iii
Ms diary: ‘1 wish to add that, in my opinion, if Spain falls away the fault
rests in great part with the Germans and their uncouth raainitrs,.”^

To clumsiness the Geimans added falseness. Hitler and Ribbentrop
deceived their allies, even when there was no need. Nothing so much
angered Mussolini as the fact that his allies told iiim lies a: u then sprang
surprises on him. If Miissolmi’s invasion of Greece was a blunder foi
which the Nazis had eventually to pay a high price, Hiller had only
himself to blame for the way in winch he had misled Ins partner and dieu
stolen an ad\antage over him in Rumania. Hitler showed suiprising
loyalty to Mussolini, but it never extended to trusting him. His golden
rule in politics remained. Trust nobody.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Hiller should have concealed his
purpose to attack Russia from the Japanese Foreign Minister. What is
striking is that he should have made no dfort to secure Japanese support
in case of such a conflict. Instead, the possibility of a clash between
Germany and Russia was represented as an auditional reason for Japan
to launch out to the south, away from her uneasy frontier with the Soviet
Union. It is one more piece of evidence pointing to the cuniidcnce
which Hiller felt in his ability to conquer Russia, as he had conquered
France, m a single campaign and without the need of help from outside
which, when victory had been Vv'on, might prove an embarrassment.
Meanwhile, Matsuoka was sufficiently deceised to ignore the hints
Ribbentrop dropped, with the result that when Gennany attacked Russia
three months later his failure to wain the Japanese Government led
to his fail Thereby Hitlci lost his best ally in the Tok\ o Cabinet, and the
Japanese quickly made up their minds to follow then own plans and
keep the Germans in ignorance. As in the case of the ilaiiaii attack
on Greece, the Germans had little jusiMcation either for surprise or
complaint.

His absorption in the war left Hitler with less and less lime for public
appearances on other than military occasions. In the whole of 1940 he
^ Cum's Dimy, 18 January, 1941, page 330.

579

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

made only seven speeches of any imporlance, even less in succeeding
years, a fact of some importance when it is recalled how great a part
Hitler’s oratory played m the history of the years before the war.

Ill the winter of 1940-1941 Hitler still obseived the routine occasions:
4 September, the opemng of the Winter Help Relief Campaign; 8
November, the anniversary of the Munich Putsch: 30 January, the
anniversary of his Chancellorship; 24 February, the anniversary of his
first big speech in Munich; 16 March, Memorial Day for those killed
ill the war. Apart from these fixed dates he made only one big speech, on
10 December, in the Berlin armaments works of RheinmetalUBorsig,
Both the place and the time of the year suggest that Hitler’s object
on this last occasion was to check the mood of pessimism which Ciano
and other observers had noticed m Berlin in the early autumn, and which
was spreading as the second winter of the war advanced, without sight of
the end so widely expected in the summer. The speech certainly shows all
Hitler’s old skill as an agitator, and is a companion piece to the famous
speech he made to the Industry Club at Dtisseldorf in January, 1932,^ Just
as then he had set himself to convince an audience of industrialists and
business men, so now every sentence was carefully directed to a working-
class audience in the city which had once been a stronghold of the
German Marxist parties.

Hiller drew the picture of Germany’s enemies in terms of an inter-
national class-war. Britain and America were rich nations, countries
ruled by capitalists in which, despite their wealth, unemployment was
to be reckoned in millions; countries in which the working-class was
biaiaully exploited and profits valued more highly than labour. These
were the two worlds now face to face. For, on the other side, was a
National Socialist Germany m which unemployment had been ended,
and m which work, not money, was the supreme value. “Today the only
question for us is where to find workers” — so completely had the prob-
lem of unemployment been solved. In Germany the economic system
had been sLibordiiialcd to the needs of the people; dividends and direc-
tors’ kcs had been limited; in political life and in the new German Army
all social prejudices had been abohshed.

If m tins war everything points to the fact that gold is fighting against
woik, Capitalirni against peoples, and Reaction against the pi ogress of
humanity, thi-ii work, the peoples and progress will be victorious. Even the
support of tlic Jewish race will not avail the others.

Yet, H' Jcr declared, he had wanted neither to rearm nor to go to war.

^ See above, pages 177-9.

580

"'ivr WOilLD will AOLD Hi BRi \l i'"

Who was I befoiC the Oical War? An Mik'^own nunijlcv; indsvidiiaL
What was I du^ng Ihv-". war? A rputc inconsf.cuous, r rcf^rruy d i er. f ua.
in no way lesponsmle for the Great War. fiova vc*, . > arc the »uks . of

Britain today? They aic the sanx‘ old .ho v\cie ^ •. sna mc

the Great War, the same Chii.chiil \riio wd^ the viLm eg»t*iUH ar.iotiyM
them during the Great War. . . .

When we have won this war it w'd! not have Ixvn won by a few ' ndustr^a lists
or millionaires, or by a few capitalists or anstoc ‘ats, or by a lew boa :cois,
or by anyone else. Woikers, yon mir-t look upon me as yvu* gu n Jiaor. I
was born a son of the people; 1 have spent all rn: ufe shagging for tlie
German people. . . .

When this war is ended Geimany will st"' 'o work m cu A g»‘ea:
“Awake'' wJl sound throughout ihecounliy. Then Ihe i,: . in i nation wiil
stop manufacturing cannon and wf.i emoark irj the lcw' k of rcconst: ac-
tion for the Thsn we ^ha’i ^hvw' the world foi the first tinu w ho r.

the real maslei— Capitalism or W'urlri Oat c.f this wuik wnl gicw hie g cut

Germaii Reich of wliich great poets have dicameu Mti)ald aiijone s ^ lu

me: “These are mere fanta^tc dreams, m** c ^ moiis," I can * al> oepr*^ tfial
W’h^n I set out on nv couKO m ivlP rs an uihnow n nai’ielc's sofdler, I
built my hopes for the future upon a v.vsu anagaadion. Yci all ha .
come trued

This theme of National Socialist Geimans agair'-^ ihe capitalist
plutocracies wa^ one wh»ch Hitler had alreauy ^kelched in his Wmicr
Help Speech of September. This was the speech in which Hitler promised
the German people reprisals for the air raid^ which, he declared, the
British had begun. With his voice rising to a sc'-cam he shouted:

if the British dar Force drops two or ilucc oi foui thousax.d k lugiam^ (>
bomhs, we will drop a hundred and fifiy, a hundred and ciyliiy, tv o himdred
thousand, three hundred thousand, four hundred llicu .md kilMgiwms anu
more m a s.ngle night. If they say that they wdi cany out large-scale
attacks on our cdics, wc will blot oat theirs. The hour wi'J come when one
of us will ciack- and it will not be Seci-ilnt (icrujiiy."

At this point, Shircr noted. Hitler had to s.op because tT the hysterical
applause fiom his audience, which consisted mm.fiy of Gc^*n m iiiirses
and social workers.

No raatici vvh u Iwippcns, England will be broken. Thit is the only time-table
I have. And it today, in Lngland, people ic mqUisUivc a 1: “fiat why
doesn’t he cnme'^”-~~lhey ninv rest assured: he'll come a!i iighy'

Hitler’s last big speech of the winder wasd. htLCcd the Triliii Spori-
palast, the scene of so many Nazi lnui< m 1931 and 1932, on the
eighth annicersary of lus Ch'mcellorship. it was a speech which bore

1 My New Oida, pages 873-99 “ Ibid., page 84K. * ibid., page 855.

58!

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

throughout the mark of that curious ambivalent mixture of attraction
and hatred which is so often to be noted in Hitler’s attitude towards
Britain.

Behind the mask of liberty and democracy, he declared, the British
had created in their Empire an unparalleled system of oppression and
exploitation. Under the slogan of the ‘'Balance of Power” they had kept
Europe divided, playing off one State against another. The rise of a
united Germany had put an end to the British game, and after the set-
back of 1918 a new and stronger Germany had arisen to confront the
British.

Does England thmk 1 have an inferiority complex with regard to her? They
swindled and duped us in those days (1918), but we were never defeated by
British soldiers. ... In those days it was Impel lal Germany to which they
objected; today it is National Socialist Germany. In reality it is whatever
Germany happens to exist.

Yet in the next minute Hitler continued:

1 have offered Britain my hand again and again. It was the very essence of
my programme to come to an understandmg with her. We have never
demanded anything from them and we have never insisted on anything. I
lepeatcdly offered them my hand, but always in vain. . . .

Even after the war had begun there weie possibilities for an agreement.
Immediately after the Polish campaign I again offered my hand. I demanded
nothing from France or Britain. Still all was m vain. Immediately after the
collapse of the west I again offered my hand to Britain. They literally spat
on me. . . .

We have been drawn into war against our will No man can offer his
hand more often than I have. But if they want to exterminate the Geiman
nation, then they will get the surprise of their lives.

Hitler’s peroration repeated the picture of the two worlds and added
the oldest theme of all his speeches, the Jews.

1 am convinced [he ended] that 1941 Will be the ciucirl yeai of a gieal New
Oidei m Eui ope. The world shall opcj« up for e\ Joone. Privileges for indi-
viduals, the tyranny of certain nations and their finoncial rulers shall fall.
And, last of all, this year wdl help to provide tlv foundations of a real
undersiaiidmg among peoples, and with it the certainty of conciliation
among nations.

When the othci woild has been dchveicd from the Jews, Juda sni will have
I Cased to play a part in Europe. . . . Tliose nations who are still opposed to
us will some day recognize the gre Her enemy within. Then they will join us
m a combined front, a front against international Jewish exploitation and
Kicial degeneration^

^ Six^crh ol 30 f irn.ai J94I , Mv Sew Oidei, 901-24.

582

‘'the world will hold ir. brlaih’'

It was an authentic touch tf the oLi Hitler, the raw anii-Sci.Jiic, aiili-
capitalist agitator of Munich in the 1920s,

Yet it was on his military rather than his political gifts that Hiller now
relied^ and with the spring of 1941 he locked foiwmd eagerly to the
moment when he could once more give th^ order to advance, this lime
to sweep the British out of the Balkans as a preliminary to the gieatest
of all his schemes, the attack on Russia.

Between Germany and Greece lay four countries— -Hungary,
Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria— whose coinplianc'^ had to be
secured before Hitler could reach the Greek frmdier. Hungary and
Rumania had already accepted the status of German satellileN, and
throughout the winter months German troop trains steadily moved
across Hungary to Rumania, where a task force of nearly seven
hundred thousand men was built up. In Bulgaria a sharp tinslc for influ-
ence took place between the Germans and the Russians. The Germans
won, and on the night of 28 February Gcm“*an forces from Rumania
crossed the Danube and began to occupy key positions Ihroughout the
country. The following day Bulgaria jiuncd the Tripartite Pact.

Yugoskwia proved more diffiv^ult RecogniHngtliis, Hitler did not ask
for the passage of German troops, but he put strong pressure on the
Yugoslav Government to follow' the example of Hungary, Rumania
and Bulgaria m acceding to the Tripartite Pact. In the middle of
February the Yugoslav Piime Minister and Foreign Minister went to
Berchtesgaden, and on 4~5 March the Prince Regent Paul also paid
a secret visit to the Fuehrer. Hitler’s biibc was the oTcr of Salonika, and
It was taken. On 25 March, Tsetkovitch, the Yugoslav Foreign Minister,
signed the Pact in Vienna.^ Ciano, wlxo had come to Vienna for the
occasion, found Hitler in good form. Yugoslavia’s accession to the Axis
greatly simplified the military problem. Given favourable weather, he
told Cu:: o, the decision in Greece could be brought about in a few days.
The sharp eyes of Winston Churchill did not miss the fact, reported by
British agents, that, immediately on Yugoslavia’s agreement, tfireo of the
five German armoured divisions which had moved southwards through
Rumania were switched north to Cracow in Poland.

Hitler’s satisfaction, however, was premature On the night of 26-27
March a group of Yugoslav officers, rebelling against their Goveriiment’s
adherence to the Axis cause, carried out a coup (Peiiii in Belgrade in
the name of the young King Peter IL

^ See the aoan ht by R L. Kn^jevitch: “Piince Paul, Hjtfcr and Salonika^' Inlf'h r-
national AJfaiti, January, 1951, pages 38-44.

583

r/: R-5 ORD 1939-1945

The 3el; 's?de coup upset the Germaub’ calculations, but whal really
K.uocu iriitler’s Gry was the insolence of a nation which ventured to
cross him. To Ids iinpenous temper this was intolerable, and must be
paid for by the most terrible punishment he could inflict.

R^bbentrop’s and otheis’ attempts to persuade the Fuehrer to try
diploniaiic meaiiS before using force were brushed aside. A hurried
council of "var summoned to the Chancellery learned of the Fuehrer’s
dec wbii wiiiie the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, was kept
v/aiticg ill another room. Fl.iler d‘d not stop to consider coolly how far
the riiualioB was altered by what had happened in Belgrade. Determined
lO destroy those v/ho had dared to cross him, he took the decision,
then and there, to postpone the attack on Russia up to four weeks, so
completely was he prepared to sacrifice eveiythmg to the satisfaction
of his desire rc.enge.

“The Fuehrer is deleimmed,” the official record of the meeting runs,
“to ni'^.ve all preparations to destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a
national unit, iviihout v/ailiag for any possible declarations of loyally
from the new government.’'^

The decision to pcsipone the attack on Russia for the sake of
punishing the Yugoslavs was a grave one, but Flitler made it without
hesilation, so ferce v/a^ liis resentment. Never was the man’s essential
chr racier more clc?^rly illuminated. The brutal tone of the orders
reflects this nicod. Not content with taking steps to ward off any threat
to hiS plans from Yugoslavia, he vus bent upon the ent’m destruction
of the Stale and its partition. The blow, he insisted, must be carried out
with “mcrcibss harshness.”

TIic military preparation'; for this new and unexpected caiir\-*gn
had to be improvised, but Killer issued Ins directive that very day, and
cy. * 1 inchidnJ the sentence- “Yugoslmny dc.pifc her protestations of
loyalty, must be considered as an enemy end cuvhed as sviftly as
possible.”- Genera] Jodi pent diC rest of the d.y and most of the night
ill ihe Chaiicxhmy wo^hmg out pbcx^, and at four o’clock on the
mormi'g if 28 \ uch \/us uhi: to the i.aisoii offmer with the
ludiian Ge'i iUl m r.* jui i cj„ measures to betaken.

Hitler had already written lo Mussoimi on the evening of the llili,
requesting hmi 1 dt cpemlK ns ni Aik uu for the next few days and
to cover the Yiigoslav-Albanian fronliei Ivlassoiini’s agreement was
received m the Cv.rly hours of the JStli At the same time imperious
ipcs'iigus had been sent .o Hu’gc’y and Bcigaria, and General von
Pa ulus hast fly dispatched to Budapest to co-ordinate the military
'ND n.!6-PS. C-127

584

“TFI WOftLD V. ILL H(>LD US

measures to be taken by the satellite forces ugaln^t the is^'kited Yugo-
slavs. Hitlefs political preparations cent lined prousioii nut only foi
stirring up the hatred and greed of YngusliiwaY .hbouis, bul also foi
disrupting the Yugoslav State internally by appealing to fiC (JfiMts,
whose grievances against the Belgrade Go\„ronient had !o! g been
fostered by Ts^azi agents

By 5 April, ten days after he had leccoed the news of th: u\'a^L

Hitler had completed his preparations, and at dawn on ibe 6 i!i, while
German forces pushed across the frontier^, squadrons i f Ge 011.01
bombers took off for Belgrade 10 carry out a mcfLiRhcal operation
lasting three whole days and designed to destio}' the Y uoda\ caf ibd
Flying at rooftop height, the German pilots syslema .cull} bombed
the city without fear of intcriention. M<ne ihaii se*entcei> lina uoid
people were killed in an attack to which the iiui le OpuvL’ Fum Jmietii
had been gn cn.

Simultaneously, other German divisions oneraiir’^ f* nii Bulgaria
began the invasion of Greece. Both opcraliosLu mou.. ed vvith ovei-
whelming force, were rapidly earned to success. On 17 \pr4 the
Yugoslav Army w'as drhen to capitulule; six days later 1 he G-xtAs, after
their six months’ heroic ic' istaucc to the In iians, were f' ced to f(»ik)vv
suit. On 22 April the British troops, who had lanJvU in Giecce less
than two moiUhs before, began lliCir e\acualion. On the 27. n tfie German
tanks rolled into Athens, and on 4 May Hnlcr presented his report to a
cheering Reichstag. The Balkan war, which Mu^soiim had begun in aa
attempt to assert his independence, had ended m a (icrnian iiianipti
which completely eclipsed the Italian parlnei of lb. Vms, and uincli
was by implication a public humination of the Once, \diO had been
driven by his faiiuics to turn to Gcinumy fur help.

In his speech to (he Reichstag Lidcr did his bcsi to disguise this
unpalatable fact:

I must state categoric dl> that tins action was nat duiC^ed againsi (iicece.
The Ducc d.d not ewsi lequest me t» * place one s'ugic M^iCuda divis'on at
disposal foi this pin Hwe. . . . The cjnce'ifraur>n of Oennan fu ues was
therefore not nmlc for the purpo c of asSi^Png the Italians again r Gmcce.
It was a precautionaiy nuasurc against the Buush atwrnpt to enticnch
themselves m the Balkans.-^

Hitler declared, with st'inc truth, dijo he had ne^e^ wanted war in the
Balkans, and pul ihc hlamc upon the B-at ish, wbi* > tried to make use
of Yugosla\ia and Giecce as they haa of PuLmd and Noiway. Only one
phrase betrayed his real fcehisgs:

^ My A'en O/i/ct, pages Lw 4)3.

L.H. — T®

585

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

You Will surely understand, gentlemen, that when I heard the news of th-"
coup d'etat m Belgrade, I at once gave orders to attack Yugoslavia. To
treat the German Reich in this way is impossible.

The real relationship between Berlin and Rome, however, was revealed
by the partition of Yugoslavia. The new frontiers were drawn by the
Fuehrer in a directive issued on 12 April. Not until 21 April, when he was
summoned to Vienna, did Ciano learn what would be Italy’s share,
Yugoslavia as a State had been wiped off the map, and her territories
divided up among her conquerors. But Italy’s claims were treated on a
level with those of the other satellites, and the Duce had perforce to
accept Hitler’s unilateral decisions.

Italian dependence upon Germany was further emphasized by the
course of events in North Africa. There the continuing Italian failure
to check the British advance led to the loss of Bardia on 5 January and
of Benghazi on 6 February. The British conquest of Cyrenaica was com-
plete. At a conference with his generals on 3 February Hitler discounted
the military danger in losing North Africa, but he was worried about the
effect on Italy.

Britain [he remarked] can hold a pistol to Italy’s head and foice her either
to make peace and retain everything, or after the loss of North Africa to be
bombarded. . . . We must make every effort to prevent this. Italy must be
given support. We are already doing this in Manta, We must however,
attempt to render effective assistance m North Afiic^i^

The steps which Hitler ordered to make good this decision proved as
successful in Afuca as they had in Greece — from Hitler’s point of view
almost embarrassingly successful. Recognizing that support from the air
was no longer enough, he icluciantly agreed to the tiansfcr of an
armoured division fiom the Balkans and secured MussoLni’s consent to
the creation of a unified command of all mxhanized and motorized
forces m the desert under a German general. For this post Flitler chose
Rommel, and Rommel took not only the British, but the German High
Command, by surprise. Ordered to submit plans for consideration by
20 April, he eictually began his attack on 31 March, and by 12 April had
driven right across Cyrenaica and recaptured Bardia within a few
miles of the Egyptian fionticr.

Indeed, by the early summer of 1941, the situation in the eastern
Mediterranean had been changed out of recognition. The British had
been thrown out of Giecce and pushed back to the Egyptian frontier.
In Iraq the pro-German Prime Mi u'rte’*, Rashid All, led a revolt against

586

^ N.D. 872-PS.

'‘the W^itLD V/ILL HOLD ITS BREATH^'

the British garrison, and at the beginning of May appealed to Hitler for
help for which Syria, under the authoiily of Vichy, provided a convenient
base Finally, between 20 May and 27 May, German parachute troops
captured the island of Crete.

With the small British forces ^^^vailablc stretched to the limit tu hold
Egypt, Palestine and Iraq, it appealed to the German .\avdl Staff
and to Rommel that it needed only a sharp push to destroy the whole
edifice of Britain’s Middle Eastern defence system. Accordingi}, on
30 May, Raeder revived his demand for a ‘‘decisive Egypt-^Suez offensive
for the autumn of 1941 which [he argued] would be more deadly to the
British Empire than the capture of London.’’ A we^k later the Naval
Staff submitted a memorandum to Hitler in which, while accepting the
decision to attack Russia as an unalterable fact, they urged that this
“must under no circumstances lead to the abandomiient or reduction
of plans, or to delay, in the conduct of the war in the eastern Meditei-
ranean.” The anxiety revealed m Mr. ChurchilFs and General Wa\err«»
dispatches at this time lends retrospective suppuit to the German NumiI
Command’s arguments. Even a quarter of the forces then being concen-
trated for the attack on Russia could, if diverted to the Mediterranean
theatre of war in time, have dealt a fata! blow to Biitisli control of the
Middle East.

But Hitler refused to see his opportunity; his intuition failed him.
With his mind wholly set upon the invasion of Russia, he dedificd to
look at the Mediterranean as anything more than a sideshow which
could be left to the Italians with a stiffening of German troops. In vain
both Raeder and Rommel tried to arouse his interest in the possibilities
open to him in the south. He was not to be moved, he preferred io dictate
rather than take advantage of events. It was to prove one of the supreme
blunders of his strategy.

Hitler’s mind had been made up at the beginning of the year. On
15 Februaiy he announced that any large-scale operations in the
Mediterranean must wait until the autumn of 1941, when the defeat of
Russia would have been accomplished. Then Malta could he taken and
the British expelled from the Mediterranean — but not before, lliis
decision was inflexible. Hitler repeated it to Ciano at Munctieniiichcn in
April, and Goermg admitted that at the time of the capture of Crete
“everytlimg was being prepared for the invasion of Russia and nobody
thought of going into Africa.”^ Crete was the end of the operations in
the Balkans, not a stepping-stone to Suez and the Middle East. On
25 hlay Hitler gave orders to support Rashid All’s revolt in Iraq, but

^ Goenn/s Interrogation, 29 August, 1945, N.CA., Supp B, page 1,108.

587

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

help was to be limited to a military mission, some assistance from the
German Air Force and the supply of arms. The directive made perfectly
clear the strict limitations to be observed:

The Arab Freedom Movement is our natural ally in the Middle East against
England. ... I have decided, inerefore, to encourage developments in the
Middle East by supporting Iraq. Whether— and if so by what means— it
may be possible afiei wards to launch an oifensive against the Suez Canal
and eventually oust the British finally from their position between the Med-
iterranean and the Persian Gulf cannot be decided until Operation Batba-
rosm IS complete.^

The utmost Raeder could do was to extract from Hitler promises of
a major effort in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatre of war
after Russia had been defeated. Hitler was lavish in such premises,
including an attack on Egypt from Libya, an advance into Asia Minor
from Bulgaria, and the invasion of Persia from positions to be won in
Transcaucasia. But the condition was tiie same in each case — not until
Russia had been defeated.

All this tunc the building up of the German forces m the east had
steadily conlinued. On 3 February General Haider presented the Army’s
detailed estimate of the situation to the Fuehrer. The huge forces to be
engaged and the vast distances to be covered excited his imagination.
The attempts of Brauchilsch and Haider to express doubts were shouted
down. Hiller brushed aside arguments based on Russia’s reserves of
manpower with the assurance that the Bolshevik regime was so hated
that initial defeats would lead to its collapse or overthrow. References
to Russia’s armament strength he met by reeling off from memory the
figures for Russian arms pioducaon since the 1920s, adding that nobody
With any spirit would allow himself to be irapiessed by such obsolete
equipment insisted that the Russians mina be prevented from falling
back into the depths of ilicir country E\erythmg depended upon the
encirclement of the mam Russian forces as near to the frontier as
possible “il is essential to wipe out la:ge sections of the enemy and not
to put them to T!ie participation of Finland, Rumania and

Hungary in the attack was assured, but Hitler added that — ^with the
exception of Rumania — ^agreements could be made only at the eleventh

^ Fuehrer Directive, No 30, 25 May, 1941; Fiieher Confeiences on Naval Affairs,
1941, pages 50-2.

- Minutes of the F'l hrcf'\ cjiifcionce on 3 February, 1941; N.D. 872-PS, Cf.
Genera! Haider Hitkr as IVai Lord {[.ordon 1950), pages 19-21.

588

''THE WORLD WILL HOLD IIS HRj \ III *

hour, in order to keep the secret \ e!l guaided. Af:er csuiuniiiig the
operational plans for each Anny C»oup, Ji; ler expre^ed luiii'.wlf as
satisfied, ''ft be reiiiembercdf he deti,. red, 'lliat ihc iriain aim is

to gam possession of the States aiid Lenmgrad \^hcu Bar-

barossa begms, the world will liold Us breath aiiu make nci conimentf’
By a double Muil meanwhile, the conccntuitum of C.rnian tioop^ in
the east was to be represented as a 'eini to disguise renewed Gcmiari
preparations for the invasion of Engktnd and the attack on Greece.

A month later, early in Mamli, Hiller held anolh.r nulilary conference,
to which he summoned all the senior comman^Rrs who were to fake
part in the attack. Hitler presented the invasion as a step forced on him
by Russia’s imperialiAic designs in the B dticand the lidlkans. A Ruw u\n
attack on Germany was a certainty, he assured them, and irmsi he fore-
stalled. A secret agreement had even bw^n ariivcd id f .tv cen Rihs ^ t d
England, and this was the reason fv>r the Britidi refusal to accept Gix -
man peace offers.

Hitler laid particular stress upon tlie ideological characler of the wai
with Russia. It could not be conducted in a chn alrous manneiv he told
the generals, but must be waged m mc'cness fashion. In particular
the Russian Commissars were to be liquidated ihc btmrcrs of an ideo-
logy hostile to National Socialism. If Haider is lu be believed, hifer
added that breaches of inlcniationul law by German soldiers were to be
excused since Russia had not participated in the Hagjc Convention
and had no rights under it.^ 1 1 idei 's account i\ certauil} in kejpirc with
Hitler’s later orders, and iiccoiding to Braachltsch i mimbei of the
generals protested to him after the confereiivc that such a way of waging
war was intolerable. The most Brauchitsch felt aWc to Jc Va's surrep-
tiiiousl) to issue an order insiructiag officeis to preseive stnci discipinic
and to punish excesses.

The generals were even more disturbed at the proposals for the
administration of the territories occupied in the east. These, un they
were set out in a special directive issued on 13 March, piovidcd that
"in the area of operations, the Reichsfuchrer S.S. \ llinu ilei ) is entrusted,
on behalf of the Fuehrer, with spaatil tasks for the preparaL^m 'if t!ic
political adminisluition, task-, which resuk fron tlie druggie which has
to be carried out betweei^ two opposing polhical ‘V iciii,. Wilhin the
I each of these tasks, the Reicksfuehiei S.S. shall act nidipuideiitl)
and under his own responsibility’”

Although the authority of the Army Commander-in-Chief was

1 Affidavit of General Haider, N.C. K., vol. VUI, pa<;%.b 645-6. •“ N.0. 447-rS

389

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

formally safeguarded, this could only mean that Himmler and the S.S.
were to be given a free hand to stamp out all traces of the Soviet system.
The directive also provided for handing over the areas occupied as soon
as possible to the political administration of special commissioners
appointed by Hitler himself, and for the immediate economic exploi-
tation of the territory seized under the direction of Goering. Even the
most unpolitical of German generals can have had little doubt what all
this amounted to. Hitler was taking steps in advance to make sure that
no scruples or conservatism on the part of the Army Commanders
should stand in the way of the treatment of the occupied territories on
thorough-going National Socialist lines.

On 20 April Hitler appointed Alfred Rosenberg, the half-forgotten
figure who had played a great part in forming his views on German
expansion in the east, as Commissioner for the East European Region.
It was an unhappy choice. Himmler, m his capacity as Reichsfuehrer of
the S S. corps d'eh'te, already claimed the responsibility for laying the
racial foundations of the New Order in the east, and this claim had been
recognized in the directive of 13 March which has already been quoted.
Goering was equally outraged by Rosenberg’s appointment: in his
capacity as Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan he claimed the right
to organize the economic exploitation of the territories in the east so
as to guarantee Germany’s present and future needs in food and raw
materials. This claim, too, was confirmed by Hitler, in a secret decree
of 20 May, despite Rosenberg’s protests. Against two such powerful
empire builders as Himmler and Goering, Rosenberg was quite unable
to defend his own position, and there was thus from the beginning a
conflict of authority in the east between the Army, Himmler, Goering
and the nominal Commissioner, Rosenberg, which only became worse
as time went on.

The mthlessness of the German treatment of the occupied territories
m the east was not fortuitous; it was part of a methodical system of
exploitation and resettlement planned in advance and entered upon
with a full appreciation of its consequences. This can be well illustrated
from a directive of Goering’s Economic Staff East, dated 23 May, 1941,
and dealing with the future of Russian agriculture. The overriding need
was defined as the use of the food-producing areas of the east to
supplement Germany’s and Europe’s supplies both during and after
the war. This was to piovide one of the economic foundations of the
European New Older, and the methods by which it was to be secured
are set out at length Tlic Directive goes on to discuss the consequences
for Russia’s industrial population:

590

"‘the V/OELD will hold t'lS Bs<lAiI|’'

The German Adniinibtiation in thcic tcrritor’cs may well attempt to
mitigate the consequences of the famine which v/ill iindoabtedly take place,
and to accelerate the return to ptimitive agricultural corahiionh, . . . How-
ever, these measures will not avert famine. Many lens of lvJIiods of people in
the industrial areas will become redundant and will eiiiicr die ui have
emigrate to Siberia. Any attempt to save the population there froni death
by starvation by importing surpluses from the Black Soil Zone wuaid be at
the expense of supplies to Europe. It would reduce Gerraanys slaying-powei
in the war, and would undermine Germanv's and Europe'^ power to
resist the blockade. This must be clearly and abs(?!utcH' undeisioodd
A memorandum summarizing a discussion of plans for Barbaiossa
on 2 May begins in similar fashion: ‘The wur can oidy be coRisiiucd if
ail the armed forces are fed by Russia in the third year of the war. There
is no doubt that as a result many millions of people will be starved to
death if we take out of the couniry the things we need,'’-
This, it should be pointed out, is not H/dcr talking lUe at night up on
the Obersaizberg; this is the translation of those grim fantasies irto the
sober directives and office memoranda of a highly organized admiius-
tration, methodically planning economic operations wdiicii must resiili
in the starvation of millions. Not far away, in the offices of Himmler's
S.S., equally methodical calculations were being nade of how tins
process could be accelerated by the use of gas chambers (iiicliiding
mobile vans) for the elimination of the racially impure.

On 30 April with the Balkan operations completed, apart from the
pendant of Crete, Hitler fixed 22 June as the new date for the opening
of the attack in the east. By May the armoured divisions which had
overrun Greece were on their way north to join the coiicenlrauon of
German troops in Poland, and an ominous lull settled over the buttle
fronts. Aficr his report to the Reichstag on 4 May Hitlei leturiied to the
Berghof, and it was there that he received the new's of one of the strangest
incidents of the whole war.

At 5.45 p.m. on Saturday, 10 May, Rudolf Hess took off in a Messer-
schmidt fighterfrom an aerodrome near Augsburg and flew alone over tlic
North Sea in the direction of Scotland. His intention was to seek out
the Duke of Hamilton, a serving officer in llie Royal Air Force, wliom
he had met very briefly during the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936.
Through the Dul e he hoped to be put in touch with political ciicles in
London and to negotiate a peace between Great Britain and Gennany.
Hess^was one of the highest figures in the Nazi Parly hierarchy, a close
friend of Hitler’s since the early 1920s, and the man who had helped him
IH!) rC-126. ‘NB. 2718-PS,

591

vv'\R-LORD, 1939-1945

to v/nte Part T of Meui Kwipf while they were iin prisoned in Landsberg
Gaol a« ler die 1923 pui^ch. In time Hess had been a Reich Minister and in
1933 had been made Deputy of the Fuehrer for all Party affairs. A man of
no great ability, his chief claim to an important position m the Party was
his dog-like devotion to Hitler, to whose inner circle of intimates he had
belonged for many years. He was not only constantly seen with him on
all Par+y occasions, but he echoed all that Hitler said, believed uii-
shakeally in the Fuehrer’s genius and accepted the Nazi creed in entiie
seriousness.

In til*.- last few years, how^ever, especially after the beginning of the
war, Hess had fallen into the background. He held no important office
in the State or Armed Forces, and the routine transaction of Party
business had no iongei any interest for Hitler. Not only was Hitler now
almost entirely occupied v/uh the conduct of the war, but Hess saw his
own position bc'ng undermined by the growing influence of Hitlei’s
personal secretaiy, htartin Boimann. As a result he became resentful
and frustrated. Re cast around for some means, some sensational act of
cLvotion, v'hereby he could restore his position and recaptuie the
favour of the leeder wi.om lie woiship]cd. Convinced that he under-
stood Hitlei’s mind as none of the later upstarts could, he determined as
early as the summer of i940 to fly to BriUun and by a dramatic coup to
bring off the negotiated peace winch had so far eluded the Fuehrer.

The flight on 10 May actually the fourth of Fless’s attempts to
carry out Ins idea. After paiachuling from his plane near Eaglesham m
Scolland and being arrested, Hess succeeded in getting m touch wnh the
Duke of Hannlion, who at once renerted the strange news to Mr.
Churchill. Hcbs’s view^ proved to be perfectly straigliiforv/ard He was
conviiiCtd tudi Ililier would defeat England, but he also believed that
Hitler, reluctant to ilesboy the Bniidi Empire, sliii preferred to make a
setilenicnt with her. IL* therefore proposed that he should undertake
iiegolialfons in opacr to conclude a on the following lines Britain
was lo give Ceirnany a free hand ui Fiirope, and in return Germany
would agice to respect the inimwly cS ilie Biitish Eiiipme — after the
return of the former German Colonies Hess made it dear that he did
not include Russia in Euiope, and added laat Kidcr had certain demands
winch Rus -ia woiihl ha^e to meet* there was no truth, however, m the
rumouis of an immitieni German attack on Russia. To these conditions
Hcss added the sapulalion that Hitler could never negotiate with the
existing British Govcipnient, or with any government which contained
Mr. ChiULhil!, later he included the simultaneous conclusion of a peace
with Italy.

592

*‘THE world will hold fTS breath’®

This was the end of the affair so far Hes, and the British were
concerned. Once Ins purpose and proposals had been elicited he T/as
treated as a prisoner of war. No negotiations were c\cr begun oi cteii
contemplated on the British side, and he remained in confinemer.i until
the Nuremberg Trials, at which he was sentenced to mipnsoiiiiicni for
life.

To Hitler, who had known nothing of Hess’s preparations, the news
came as a shock He was both angiy and mystified. Hess had left a long
and rambling letter behind, and Keitd later dcicnbcd how he found
Hitler walkin.g up and down m his study at the Bergliof. tapping his
forehead declaring that Hess must ha\c been era?}, Hiller ccriaiiily
never took the mtssion at all senoud}, his one concein was lunv to
handle the news of the flight m such a \v’ay as to cauw Ica.r enibairass-
ment to hn regime. The fact that his own deputy ond desnted fidowcr
had flown to Britain could be highly damaging to hi^. presage, and
although Hitler was inclined to behe\e that licss had acted quite
sincerely while suiTcrmg from some mental derangement !;c stripped him
of his offices and gave orders that, if he returned lo Gennai*\, he was to
be shot at once. Intensive enquiiies, however, failed to uiicoser an>
conspiracy. It became clear that Hess had acted entirely on Ills own
initiative and had not even told Ins wife.

Hess said nothing to his interrogators of Hidcbs .ntention of invading
Russia, probably because he did not know of il himself His flight
had no connection with the events which were so soon to follow'. He
had fiist thought of his plan in 1940, and in lus miifi it was to he the
conclusion to the war m the west, in no sense a preliminary to the
campaign in the east, in Moscow suspn.jn pcioisted long afterwards
that Hess had come on a mission to conclude peace w pb Bnlain befuie
Hitler turned east and launclud his invanon of Riinsi.l with British
support, or at least with British comphance. Theie is no ewdeiice at all
in favour of such a view. Far from waiting to see whether Hess was suc-
cessful in his mission or not, Hitler disnii oed it as a mud idea, and on
12 May, two days after Hess’s flight, fixed the date for ihe opening of
Barbu ivssa.

To Hitler’s relief and surpiise the British made no effort to extort
revelations from Hess or to invent them, and within a few days the
news had lost its interest. By the time he met Mussolini at the beginning
of June, Hitler was ready to weep for Ins loq comrade. Despite its
sensational character, the Hess episode was, as Mr. Cliurchiii justly
remarks^ an incident of little nnpoitancc.

593

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

The few remaining weeks were an anxious time for Hitler, Rumours of
an impending attack on the Soviet Union were rife, and, conscious of
his own duplicity, Hitler watched carefully for any sign of a Russian
move to forestall it.

In order to camouflage his intentions Hitler ordered Russian orders
for goods placed m Germany to be fulfilled and deliveries maintained
till the last moment. A new trade treaty had been concluded in January,
1941, and the Russians continued to make a prompt dispatch of raw
materials and food to Germany up to the day of the attack. Schnurre,
the chief German economic negotiator, reported in April, 1941, that,
after difficulties during January and February, “deliveries in March
rose by leaps and bounds.”^ A month later he wrote: ‘T am under the
impression that we could make economic demands in Moscow which
would go even beyond the scope of the treaty of 10 January, 1941.’’^

Indeed, in the last three months before the attack, the Soviet Govern-
ment, while building up its defences in the west, did everything it could
to conciliate and appease the Germans. When Matsuoka, on his return
to Tokyo, passed through Moscow in April, Stalin made an unexpected
appearance at the station to see him off and publicly asked for the
German Ambasc>ador. When Schulenburg presented himself, Stalin
put his arm round his shoulders and declared: “We must remain
friends and you must now do eveiything to that end.” Later Stalin
turned to the Geiman Military Attache and remarked: “We will remain
friends with you — in any event.”* The German Ambassador had no
doubt that this unusual display on Stalin’s part had been specially
contrived to impress those present with Russo-Geiman friendship. At
almost the same time the Russian Go\eriinient suddenly accepted the
German proposals for settling frontier questions arising out of the
Soviet annexation of Lithuania.

Early m May Stalin took over the Chairmanship of the Council of
People’s Commissars, a step universally regarded as indicating the
prospect of a crisis with which only Stalin himself could deal. Im-
mediately afterwards, however, on 8 May, Tass denied reports of troop
:oncentrations in the west: on 9 May the U.S.S.R. withdrew its recog-

^ Schnurre’s Memorandum of 5 Apiii, 1941 N S.R , pages 318-9.

- Schnurre’s Mcmoiandum of 15 May, 19^1 , ibid , pages 339-41.

Schulenburg’s Report to the German Foieign Ofiice, 13 April, 1941; ibid.,
pages 323-4.

594

“the world will hold its BRBAin’'

nition from the legations of the exiled Governments of Belgium, Norway
and Yugoslavia, and on 12 May established relations with the pro-
Nazi Government of Rashid Ali in Iraq. Ail through this period the
Soviet Press was kept under the strictest restraint m order to avoid
provocation, and as late as 14 June Tass pul out a statement categori-
cally denying difficulties between Germany and Russia.

On 28 April Count von der Schulenburg, the German Ambassador,
in Moscow, saw Hitler and tried to convince him that there was no
danger of an attack on Germany by Russia. Weizsacker, the State Sec-
retary, supported Schulenburg’s views.

If every Russian city reduced to ashes [he wrote to Ribbentiop] were as
valuable to us as a sunken British warship, 1 should advocate the German-
Russian war for this summer. But I believe that w'e would be the victots over
Russia only m a military sense, and would on the other hand lose in an
economic sense. . . . The sole decisive factor is whether this project will
hasten the fall of England.^

On 6 and 7 June the Naval War Diary records further dispatches from
Schulenburg: ‘‘Russia will only fight if attacked by Gei many . . . Russian
policy still strives as before to produce the best possible relationship lo
Germany. ... All observations show that Stalin and Molotov arc
doing everything to avoid a conflict with Germany. The entire behaviour
of the Soviet Government, as well as the attitude of the Press, which
reports all events concerning Germany in a factual manner, support
this view. The loyal fulfilment of the economic treaty with Germany
proves the same thmg.”^

There is, in fact, not a scrap of evidence to show that, in the summer of
1941, the Soviet Government had any intention of attacking Germany.
Their one anxiety was to avoid a German attack. But Hitler refused to
listen to his Ambassador; he was interested only in reports that could
be used to support the pretext for his decision, a decision reached long
before without regard to Russia’s attitude or the threat which he now
alleged of Russian preparations to strike w^eslwards.

In May Antonescu paid his third visit to Hitler, this time at Munich,
and agreed that Rumania should take part in he attack. At the end of
the month the Finnish Chief of Staff spent a week in Germany to discuss
detailed arrangements for co-operation between the two armies. Still
Hitler said nothing to Mussolini. When they met at the Brenner on 2
June the most that Ribbentrop admitted was that Russo-German

^ Weizsacker’s Memorandom of 28 April, 1941; N.S.R, pages 333-4.

»N.D C-170.

WAR-LORD. 1939-1945

relations were not so ^ood as they had been. Stalin, lie told Ciaiio,
was unlikely to coniiPit the folly of attacking Germany, but if he did
the Russian forces would be smashed to pieces. In a general survey of
the Situation, Russia was only mentioned by the way. Hitler and Ribben-
trop were more concerned to reassure Mussohm about Admiral Darlan’s
visit to Berchtesgaden m May and his attempt to interest Hitler again
in the possibilities of Fraiico-Gennan collaboration in North Africa
and the Middle East.

A fortnight later Pvibbentrop was more forthcoming, or more indis-
creet. He met Ciano at Venice on 15 June to arrange the adherence of
the puppet state of Croatia to the Tripartite Pact. As they v/ent to dinner
in their gondola Ciano asked his colleague about the rumours of an
impending Gemian attack on Russia.

“Dear Ciano, was Ribbenlrop’s expansive reply, “I cannot tell you
anything as yet because every decision is locked in the impenetrable
bosom of the Fuehrer. However, one thing is certain: if we attack, the
Russia of Slaim will be erased from the map within eight weeks.”^
From Venice Rjbbenlrop sent a telegram to Budapest waiximg the
Hungarians to be ready. On 18 June a Non-Aggression Pact between
Germany and Turkey was announced and Hitler wrote a last letter to
Antonescu outi»ning the duties of the Geiman forces in Rumania. On
the 14th Hitler had summoned a conference of his commanders-in-cliief
m the Reich Chancellery. One after another they explained their
operational plans to the Fuehrer, while lluler nodded liis approval,
occasionally suggesting some alterations, but only of a iiiinor character.
Satisfied with the preparations that had been made, m the following week
Hitler left for his new headquarters, h iLiSchanze (“Wolf's Lair”),
near Rastenburg, in East Prussia.

There, on 21 June, the eve of the attack, he dictated a letter to Mus-
solini. It was the first official news Mussolini had been given of his
intentions.

Ducel

I am writing this letter io you ai a mcment vhea months of anxious deliber-
ation and conlmuous, nerve-iacking waning are ending in the haidesl
decision of my 1 fe. 1 beheve— after seeing the latest Russian situation map
and after appraisal of numeious other repoits — that I cannot take the
responsibility for waiting longer, and above all, I believe that there is no
other way of obviating llie danger—unless it be further waiting, which,
however, would necessarJy lead to disaster in th«s or the next year at the
latest.

596

^ Ciaiio^s Diar)\ pogc 559,

''the V/ORLD will IIuLi) IIS BREATH”

As SO often before, Hidei proceeued to justiiy himself at length.
Britain bad lost the war, but held out in the hope of aid from Russia.
On their side, the Russians, levertmg to tlieir old e\pansioiii%t policy,
prevented Germany fioin launching a Lirgt--scalc attack in Ific west by
a massive concentration of forces m the east. Until he had saicguaided
his rear, Hitler declared, he dared not take the mk of attackii'g England.

Whalevei may now come, Duce, our Situation cuinot become woise a
lesuit of this step, it can only impiove. Even if 1 should oe obliged at the end
of the year to leave sixty or seventy divisions in Russia, tint is only a fraction
of the forces I am now continually using on the Eastern Frontd

Once again Mussolini was roused in the middle of t!ie night with the
usual urgent message from the Fuehrei. "I do not disturb even iii}
servants at night,’" he grumbled to Ciano; “but the Germans make me
jump out of bed at any hour without the least consideration.’ Wliiie
the Duce was still reading Hitler’s letter the attack was already begin-
ning. From the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea more than a hundred
and fifty German, Finnish and Rumanian divisions were pi essingforwurd
across the Russian frontiers. The German forces, divided into tiircc
Army Groups commanded by Leeb, Bock and Ruiid.>icdh included
nineteen armoured divisions and twelve motorized, supporkd by over
tw^o thousand seven hundred aircraft.

In the 1920s Hitler, then an unsuccessful Bavarian politician, whose
political following numbered no more titan a few thousands, had written
at the end of Mem Kampf:

And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the fuieign
policy tendency of oui pre-vvar period. We mke up where we broke off six
hundred years ago. We stop the endless Gcaiwn movement low aids the
south and west of Euiope, and ruin our gaze tow at us the lands of the east.
At long last we put a stop to the coiontal and conimeicmi pohc)^ of pre-war
days and pass over to the teriiional policy of the future. But when wc speak
of new terriioiy in Europe today we must think principal^ of Russia and her
border vassal states. Destmy itself seems to wish to point out the way to us

here This colossal Empire in the east is i ipe for dissolution, and the end

of the Jewish domination in Russia wdl also Dc the end of Russia as a state,'^

At dawn on 22 June, 1941, one year to the day since the French had
signed the armistice at Conipiegne, Hitler believed that he was about
to fulfil his own prophecy. He concluded his letter to Mussolini wJth
these words: “Smee I struggled through to this decision, 1 again feel

^ Hitlef e Miissolwi, pages 99-104 " Cuwo\ Diary, pvige 365.

Meat Kampf, part II, chapter XPa.

597

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

spiritually free. The partnership with the Soviet Union, in spite of the
complete sincerity of my efforts to bring about a final conciliation, was
nevertheless often very irksome to me, for in some way or other it
seemed to me to be a break with my whole origin, my coiicepts and
my fomer obligations. I am happy now to be delivered from this
torment.”^

It was to prove an ii revocable decision.

598

^ Text of the lettei in N.S.R , pajies 349-53.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE UNACHIEVED EMPIRE

19414943

At the time hitler gave two reasons for hih decision to attack
Russia: the first, that Russia was preparing to attack Germany in the
summer of 1941; the second, that Biitain’s refusal to acknowledge defeat
was due to her hopes of Russian and American intcr\ention, and that
Britain had actually entered into an alliance with Russia against
Germany. The way to strike at Britain was thus to destroy her hopes of
Russian aid.

At most these arguments reinforced a dcciTon already reached on
other grounds. Hitler invaded Russia for the simple but sufficient reason
that he had always meant to establish the foundations of his thousand-
year Reich by the annexation of the territory lying between the Vistula
and the Urals.

The novelty lay not so much in the decision to turn east as in the
decision to drop the provision he had hitherto icgarded as indispensable,
a settlement with Britain first. He had failed to secure this by diplomacy,
he had now failed to secure it by war. Several factois, however, combined
to make him no longer attach the same importance to this condition.
Forced to recognize that the British weie not going to be Muffed or
bombed into capitulation, Hiller convinced himself that Brilam was
already as good as defeated. She v^as certainly not in a position to
threaten, in the near future, his hold over the Continent. Why then
waste time forcing the British to admit that Germany should have a
free hand on the Continent, when this was already an established fact to
which the British could make no practical objection?

This argument was confirmed by the conviction, based on the expei-
ience of the campaigns of 1939 and 1940, that the German Armed Forces
under his direction were invincible.

Most important of all was the belief, a result partly of this conviction,
partly of an underestimate of Russian strength, that the Soviet armies

599

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

could be defeated in. a single campaign. Hitler knew that he was taking a
risk in invading Russia, but he was convinced that the war in the east
would be over m two months, or three at the most. He not only said
this, but acted on it, refusing to make any preparations for a winter
campaign. A senes of sharp defeats, and he w^as certain that Stalin’s
Government would fall. “Hopes of victory,” Field-Marshal von Kleist
said after the war, “were largely built on the prospect that the invasion
would produce a political upheaval in Russia . . , and that Stalin would
be overthrown by his own people if he suffered heavy defeats.”^ “We
have only to kick in the door,” Hitler told Jodi, “and the whole rotten
structure will come crashing down.” Hiller was not blind to the numer-
ical superiority of the Russians, but he v/as certain that the political
weakness of the Soviet regime, together with the technical superiority
of the Germans, would give him a quick victory in a campaign which he
never expected to last much longer than that in which he had overrun
France the year before.

Once he had extended his power to the Urals and the Caucasus, Hitler
calculated, he would have established his empire upon such solid found-
ations that Britain, even if she continued the war and even if the United
States intervened on her side, would be unable to make any impression
on it. Far from being a desperate expedient forced on him by the frustra-
tion of his plans for the defeat of Britaiii, the invasion of Russia repre-
sented the realization of those imperial dreams which he had sketched
in the closing section of Mem Kampf and elaborated in the fireside circle
of the Berghof. At one and Ih? same time he would be able to guarantee
German victory in the war and the creation of that European New Order
which was to be the permanent memonal to his genius. This was the
prize — -and it was to be had, so he convinced himself, at the cost of no
more than a single campaign which would be over before the winter
came.

The opening of the campaign seemed 'o justify Hiller’s optimism. The
German armoured divivSions struck deep into Russian territory. By
5 July they had reached the Dnieper, by the I6lh Smolensk, little moie
than hvo hundred miles from Moscow and four hundied and fifty miles
from the siartmg point of Bialystok On 14 July Hitler issued a directive
in which he spoke of considerable reductions in the strength of the Army
in the near future, and the diversion of the main effort in armaments to
the Air Force.

But, although the German troops rapidly gamed ground, they did not
^ Quoted bv B, H. Lidiel Hait* The Othei Side oj the Hill, page 259

HU: CNAChlKVED E^IPfkK

succeed in aestro^mig the Ruhsian arrases oy tlie huge encischiig move*^
iiieiil3 \v1iicli HdLi Lad envisaged iKnvcvci niuny Ru^slan^, ln»ops verc
taken prisoner, there were always more ready to defend the next hrse— ^
and all the time the German Army was bemg drawn deafer m.

At this poiiu a divergence began to appear between lliflerh and the
Axiiiy H]gh Command’s views of the objectives to be grnicd, IhJsr— a
his first Directive of 18 December, 1940, sl^ )ws — laid the greatest stress
on clearing the Baltic States and capturing Lcrmgrad: once the inim I
battles were over, the Centre Army Group was t<.^ support this norlhcrlt
drive through the Baltic Slates and nol to press on to hUKcow. A« I he
same time the Soulherii Auiiy Group was lo d he souil^-east towaid
Kiev and the Dnieper, in order to secure the agrLullund d^d induslria!
lesources of the Ukraine.

Braiichitsch and Haider took a dilTerent view. The> timt the

best chance of caiching and destroying the Russian for.:es was to press
on to Momow, along the read to which they wouhi find the balk of
those forces, including the new armies which were being lapidly formed.
They w^ere in favour of concentrating, not dispcn>!i!g, the Geniun effort.
Tins view was supported by Bock, the Commdndei-in-Ck.'f of the
Centre Army Group, and by las two panzer commanders, Gmunian and
Hoth, but it w^as rejected by Hitler, who issued a new diiccli\e on 19
July, ordering part of Bock’s mobile forces to s\.!ng north lo asCst the
Norikern Amiy Group’s drive on Leningrad, and ihe rest to wheel south
and help the Southern Aimy Group in Us ad /mice into the LiKraine.

Brauchitsch tempoiized on the grounds fi A tiiiw vuu. needed to over-
Iiaul the tanks and bring up replacemcs ts. The time thus gained w c u vd
to renew the arguments against Hitleib orders, and tde dispute rumhled
on throughout August while the Cenirc Army Gro’‘p lemmiied halted
east of Smolensk.

By Scptembcf Hiiler was beginumg to lO'.e inteiesi in Leniiigfad, hiii
he was still opposed to the dn\x on KL ard nuicli more exciled by
the possibibly of a huge eneirciement in t! e Id.rei ic. Angeied by the
opposition of the Army High Co’^mj :d, he lejecled the nieiiiormHiuiii
drawn up by the Gencial Staff with the remark that o;ily minds set in
the mould of outworn hcoiies could fail is nonce the o[mo’timilies iii
the south, fi" the end he ogrivd that the Centre krniy Gi oup shonlu send
only limited forces lo as.isl in ihe attack on Leivngrad and that it
should prepare to launch a major offeu ive agamst \ioscew, but he
insisted that the battle of encirclement in llie Uhmme must be pul first
and that Bock’s Army Group must male the fullest possible coiitri*
h'ltioii to thus before being freed to icsimie iP> advance eastwards.

(01

WAii-LORD, 1939-1945

Reluctantly the General Staff were forced to assent, but General
Haider has since argued that this was the turning-point of the campaign
and that Hitler threw away the chance of inflicting a decisive defeat on
the Russians for the sake of a prestige victory and the capture of the
industrial region of the Ukraine.

For not only had this dispute seriously worsened the relations between
Hitler and his generals, it also led to the waste of valuable time. The
southern encirclenaent proved a great success and over six hundred
thousand Russians were taken prisoner east of Kiev, but it was late in Sept-
ember before the battle was ended. The onset of the autumn rains, whicli
turned the Russian countryside, with its poor roads, into a quagmire,
promised ill for the attack on Moscow, which the Army High Command
had wanted to launch in August. The Balkan campaign and the bad
weather in the early summei of 1941 had already cut short the campaign-
ing season, and beyond the autumn there loomed the threat of the
Russian winter. Hitler, however, elated by his success in the south, now
pushed forwaid the attack on Moscow which he had held back for so
long, even withdrawing Hoeppner’s Panzer Group from the operations
against Leningrad in order to strengthen the thrust in the Centre.

On 2 October the advance of the Centre Army Group was resumed,
after a halt of two months. On the 3rd Hitler spoke in Berlin, boasting
that “behind our troops there already lies a territory twice the size of the
Geirnan Reich when I came to power in 1933. Today I declare, without
reservation, that the enemy in the east has been struck down and will
never rise again.” On 8 October Orel was captured, and the next day
Otto Dietrich, the Reich Press Chief, caused a sensation with the
announcement that the war in the east was over. Between Vyazma and
Bryansk, another six hundred thousand Russians were trapped and taken
prisoner. A week later the Gciman spearheads reached Mozhaisk, only
eighty miles from the Russian capital

Yet even now Hitler could not make up his mind to concentrate on
one objective. In the north the pressure on Leningrad was maintained and
Hitler spoke of his intention of razing the city to the ground. In the south
Rundstedt was ordered to clear the Black Sea coast (including the
Crimea) and strike beyond Rostov, eastwards to (he Volga and south-
eastwaids to the Caucasus, “Wc laughed aloud when we received these
orders,” Rundstedt later declared, “for winter had already come and w^e
were almost seven hundred kilometres from these cities.”^

Thus, with foices which were numerically inferior to the Russians,

^ Field-anirshal von Rundstedt^ interrogation, July, 1945, Milton Shulmair
Defeat in the West (Second Edition, London, 191^^), page 68

602

THE UNACHIEVED EMPIRE

throughout the campaign of 1941 Hitler swung between a number of
objectives, losing time in switching from one to another, stretching his
resources to the limit and fanning out his armies across a thousand-mile
front, while always falling short of the decisive blow which would knock
Russia out of the war. He had fallen into the trap against v Inch he had
warned his generals before the invasion began, that of allowing the
Russians to retreat and draw the Germans farther and farther into the
illimitable depths of their hinterland. When the dreaded winter broke
over them, the German armies, despite their victories and advances,
had stiU not captured Leningrad and Moscow, or destroyed the Russian
capacity to continue the war.

All through the summer and autumn of 1941 Hitler was entirely
occupied with the fighting on the Eastern Front. Not content with fixing
the strategic objectives of his aimics, he began to interfere ni the detailed
conduct of operations. “What had been comparatively infrequent in
previous campaigns,” General Haider writes, “now became a daily
occurrence.”^ There w^as little time for political conversations, and
Mussolini’s much-publicizcd visit to the Eastern Front towards the end
of August appears to have been organized more for propaganda
puiposes than to provide an occasion for serious discussions. Earlier in
August Churchill and Roosevelt had met off the coast of Newfoundland,
and from there issued on 12 August the Joint Declaration of War Aims
known as the Atlantic Charter. The meeting of Hitler and Mussolini, and
the final communique with its slogan of the “European New Order,” was
a counter-demonstration.

Mussolini reached East Prussia by train on 25 August and was at once
taken by Hitler to his headquarters. Wolf^sthanze wus hidden in the
heait of a thick forest, miles from any human habitation. Its buildings
resembled Alpine chalets, elaborately fitted with central heating, tele-
phone exchanges, a wireless station and a cinema, protected by powerful
A. A. batteries and surrounded by a triple iiiig of guaids. Only later,
under the Ihieat of air attacks, were the staff moved to the concrete
bunkers in which Hitler passed the last years of liis hfc, but from the
beginning the dim light of the forest produced a feeling of giooiii in
everyone who Vv^ent there.

Two conversations took place between Fuehrer and Duce on tiie 25th,
and Mussolini’s recoids of both have been preseivcd. The first meeting
was taken up with an exposition of the military situation iii the east,
during which Mussolini was reduced to the role of admiring listener.

' Haldci Hitli’r as Wat I ord, p.t'je 4J.

603

WAR-LORO, 1939-1945

Hitler, lie noted, spoke with great confidence and precision, but admitted
that faulty intelligence work had completely misled him as to the size and
excellence of the Russian forces as well as the dctemiination with which
they fought. In their second talk, tne same evening, the two dictators
ranged over the rest of the v/orld. Hitler spoke biilerly of Franco and
was evasive on the subject of the French, who were, as always, the object
of jealous complaints by Mussolini.

The Fuehrer [says the Itahan report] ga\e a detailed accouii* of the Jewish
clique which surrounds Roosevelt and exploits the American people. He
stated that he could not, for anything in the world, live in a country like the
U.S.A., whose conceptions of Ufe arc inspired by the most grasping com-
merciaiism and which does not love any of the lofOest expressions of the
human spirit such as music. ^

Hitler showed some embarrassment at (he Ducc’s pressing offer of more
Italian troops for the Eastern Front, but “concluded by expressing the
most lively desire to come to Italy — whtn fne war is over — in order to
pass some time in Florence, a city dear to him above ail oihtis for the
harmony of its art and its natural beauty.'’

The next day Hitler and Mussolini Hew (o Ficld-Mai dud von Kluge’b
H.Q. at Bresl-Litovsk, and latei in the wcH Run Jstcch's at Dnian in
the Ukraine, There Mussolmi inspected an "'talian division lunched
with the Fuehrer in the open air, surrounded by a crov^d of soldiers. At
the end of the meal Hitler walked about among the crowd talking in-
formally, while Mussohni, to Ins annoyance, was lefl ith Rundstedt.
The Ducc took this as a deliberate shght, and rcr-iarkeo to his ambassa-
dor that Hitler in the rn.ddie ofhis Ooops Uoked anything but a sokdicw
Mussolini had his reverje, ho\veve«*, on the reiarn iiight, when he
insisted on piioiing the plane m wh^ch he and Hitler were flying. Hitief s
own pilot, Bauer, icmaiimd at the cordiols all the time, but Hitler never
took his eyes off Mussel. ni and sal iiaid in his seal uiitil Mussolini
left Bauer to his job The Fuerrer's congratukit ons were mingled
with undisguised relief. Mussoliii. wa^ childishly ae'^ghied and insisted
on his performance being recorded in the coni.rnniqiie.

A feature of the cmnmuniquc was tlie prominence given to the
“European New Order,'’ winch the D.ctaiors pledged iheraselves to
establish by removing the cau:,es of v^^ar. eiadicating the threat of
Bohhevisiii, pulling an end to “plutocratic exploilatiOiT’ and estab-
lishing close and peaceful collaboration among the peoples of Europe.
This was an expansion of Ihiler’s earlier idea of a “Monroe doclnne for
Europe” directed against ihe Ang’^-Saxon powers and a counter-blast
^ Ciani)\s Diplomat iL Papeis, pages 449-52. - Ibid.

604

THE UNACHIEVED EMPIRE

io Hie Anglo-American AtkiitiC Ci:arter. V/hen Ciano viMlcd 41

headquarters towards the end of October, 1941, he was much
the way in which this idea had taken root.

In the past [he wrote to Mu^sohiii] wc have seen in liirn the flovveijog
and decline of a series of slogans which arc born m thi ninid of lie rueliier
and are repeated all the way down to the lowest-ranking of Ins collaboialors.
Now the fashionable slogan iS llul of ‘‘huiop^^ui scliJard}.'' Europe—
the Fuehi'cr said — besides being a getgiaplhcal expression Is a cultural and
moral concept. In the war against Bolshevism llic first signs of continental

soiidaiity have shown themsches Tins is whal ail those near him

repeat,^

A fortnight after receiving Ciano in East Prussia Hitler was ni Mumch
for the traditional celebration of the 8 !\ovember arnii\ersary. In his
speech Hirler developed an argumcnl whtch was to provide a companion
theme to the European New Omcr in Nazi propaganda- - GcTiiiaiiy as
the society in which class divisions and privileges had been abolished,
the New Germany in the New Europe.

V/hat distinguishes the picseni from what went before fhe said ai
Munich] IS simply this: then the people wcic not behind the kaiser, . . .
Then the leaders had no roots in the pe'jple, foi when al! is said and
done it was a class state. Today we e; c in the midst of ilic comfhwioii of
what grew out of that (hirst) War. For when I returned fami the war, 1
brought back home Wuh me my eApcnenccs at the front; out of them, I
built my National Socialist commumty of die people ai home. T. kay Che
National Socialioi comniuniiy of the p^^oole takes its place at the front,
and you will notice how die AnneJ Forces from month to month
become more Naiiuaai SociaoM, how' ihsy mcieavmgh beai the stamp
of the New Ctimany, how all privileges, classes, prejudices and so on
are more and more Temo\ed; how, from month to month, the German
national community gums ground.-
At the end of November Hitler and Ribbenlrop staged a demonstra-
tion of the European solidarity which, they claimed, had come into
existence ufkder Gernianyk benevolent kvacrship. ReprcNcntatives of
nine European countucs, together wuh those of Japan and MunchuLuo,
were siiiiimoiied to Berhn to renew the original Anti-Coniiiitem Pact.
Ciano wrote in his diary: 'The Germans were the imistcis of llic liouse,
and they made us all feci it, even though they were especially polite to un.

^ Cuifio's D plohiatiL Papen, panes 455-60. CkinoS icUcr to the Ducc, 26 Octobci,
1941.

“ Speech at Muiiich, 8 Novembci, 1941 , Piani',e. pages 117-8
^ These were lial), Spam, Hungaiy, Rumania, Sk>,ak»a, Ciodiia, Biiigaiia,
Finiand and Denmark

605

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Tlieie is no way out of it. Their European hegemony has now been
established. Whether this is good or bad is neither here nor there; it
exists. Consequently, it is best to sit at the right hand of the master of
the house.

What the ISIew Order would mean in practice can best be judged from
a conversation which Ciano had with Goering in Berlin. Reporting this
to Mussolini, Ciano explained that they had been discussing Greece and
the fear that the Greeks might soon be suffering from famine. Goering
showed little interest: "’We cannot wony unduly about the hunger of the
Greeks,’’ he said. ""It is a misfortune which will strike many other
peoples besides them. In the camps for Russian prisoners they have
begun to eat each other. This year between twenty and thirty million
persons will die of hunger in Russia. Perhaps it is well that it should be
so, for certain nations must be decimated. But even if it were not,
nothing can be done about it. It is obvious that if humanity is condemned
to die of hunger, the last to die will be our two peoples.”-

Throughout this same month of November the German armies had
been fighting their way nearer to Moscow under steadily worsening
weather conditions. Bitter cold (against which they had no winter
clothing to protect them), the few hours of daylight and the long nights
handicapped the attacking forces, fighting m an unfamiliar land far
from home. More and more doubts were fell by commanders as to the
wisdom of continuing the attack, but Hitler was insisieni : the Russian
resistance, lie declared, was on the verge of collapse When Ciano saw
him at his East Prussian headquarters towards the end of October,
Hitler kept on repeating that Russia was already ‘‘virtually” defeated.
Russian dead, wounded and prisoneis he put at the fantastic figure of
ten millions; the armoured divisions had been decimated; the corps of
non-commissioned officers wiped out almost in its entirety.

Warnings and appeals were of no avail. Hitler categorically refused to
admit that he had been wrong Whatever the cost in men’s lives, his
armies must make good his boasts, and he drove them on relentlessly
On 2 December Kluge’s Fourth Army made a last desperate effort to
break through the Russian defences in the forests west of Moscow.
There was light only until three o’clock m the afternoon, snow was thick
on the ground and the earth was frozen to a depth of several inches. A
few parties of troops from the 258th infantry Division actually reached
the outskirts of the capital and saw the flashes of the A. A. guns defending

606

^ Ciano" Diar}\ page 402
“ Ciano' s Diplomatic Papen^ pages 464-5.

IHE IjNACHIEMD EMPIRE

the Kremlin, but they could not hold these outlying positions and had to
be pulled back.

At that moment, on 6 December, to the complete surprise of Hitler
and the German High Command, the Russians launched a majoi
counter-olFensive along the whole Central Front with one aiindred fresh
divisions, and swept away the German threat to Moscow 1 he German
troops, already driven to the limit of endurance, wavered , ! r a feu cla> ^
there was great confusion and the threat of a Russian break-through.
Hitler was faced with the most serious military crisis of the war so far.
Even if he surmounted it, one thing was already clear: tlic great gamble
had failed, and 1941 would end without the iong-hcralded victory
in the east.

On 7 December, the day after the Russians opened their oflensive t(»
relieve Moscow, the Japanese look the American Fleet by surprise in PLarl
Harbour. Four days before, the Japanese Ambassadois in Berlin and
Rome had informed the German and Italian Foreign Ministers that the
negotiations between Japan and the U.S A. had reached a deadlock, that
war might be imminent, and that Japan requested the support of her
allies in the event of a conOict breaking out. This was the fust direct
communication Hitler and Mussolini had received of the possibility (if
immediate war between Japan and America. The Japanese, taking a leaf
out of Hitler’s book, had kept their own counsel, and the new of the
attack on Pearl Harbour came as a surprise to Hitler.

At the time of Matsuoka’s visit to Berlin in the spring of 1941 Hiller
had urged the Japanc«^e Foreign Minister to attrek Sing. pore. Afier the
invasion of the Soviet Union Ribbentrop made an attempt through the
German Ambassador in Tokyo to persuade the Japanese to take the
Russians in the rear."* The one course, however, which Hidcr had never
recommended to the Japanese had been to attack the I l.S. A. : iiulecd, he
had constantly repealed to Matsuola m the spring that one of the bene™
ficial results of seizing Singapore would be to detei the Americans from
entering the war. It might have been expected thciefore that the Fuehrer
would show some irntation at the independent course adopted by the
Tokyo Government in face of his advice. There is no c\ idence, however,
to support this. On the contraiy, he appears to have been delighted with

^Cf. RibbentropN telegram to Ott, 10 Jul>, 1941, and Otfs rcpi> . ‘N am tr>ing
with all means possible to work towards .fapaii’s entiy into the war against Russia
as soon as possible.” — N.D. 2,896 and 2,897-PS

607

W4R-LORU, 1939-1945

the news and he rapidly decided to follox/ the Japanese example by
declaring war on the United States hmibclf. When Rilbciitrop poin-cd
out that the Tripartite Pact only bound Germany to assist J^.pall m the
event of an attack on her b> some o.her Power^ and that to declare war
on the U.S.A. would be to add to the number of Germany’s opponents,
Hitler dismissed these as unimportant considerations, lie seems never to
have weighed the possible advantages of deferring war with America as
long as possible and allowing the USA to become involved in a war m
the Paciiic which would leduce the support she was able to give to
Great Britain.

Hitherto Hiller had shown considerable patience m face of the
growing aid given by the U S. Go\nrrmenl to the Brdish. But he v/as
coming to the condiision that a virtual state of war aIrCchy cxisicd wntli
the U S.A and that there was no point in debyin g the open clash which
he regarded as inevitable. The of ITitlcrT attack on President

Roosevelt in Ins speech of 1 1 December sagnesL tl c iollc of the .esent-
men! accumulatiog under the restraint he had so far practised in ins
iclations with Amebic'

Two other factors affected Plitici’s decision. The first v/as his di^as-
tixms undeicslim i<e of Anicuam strength He k-"ew nothing of the
United Sfates. Tie mixture of race? in itS population, as wcii as the
freedom and kick of aiidroriiaiian discml-nc in its life, oredisposed him
to regard it as another cecudcnl bourgeois democracy, nwapable of any
sustained military effort. The ease with wh'ch the Japaix.e simek their
blow at Peaii Harbour confu'med these prejudices Hitiei cerfamly
never supposed — any more than H. 'denburg and Ludcrdorflin IS 17 —
that he would have to reckon with a rn *ji)r Arner can irJervention in the
European war, nor did he foresee the pos*'b:hiy of an invasion on the
scale of theX vdoich the ..sL and ihe An-.^ncaiib inounteJ two and a
half years later.

The second factor is moic to as.>CbS. When ITcssohni learned

of the p»)s ability ^ " \,ar h^iwccn J.pan ard ihc Umlcu Staies, in ex-
pressing his satisfaction he iimde the remark. '‘Tims we a’ ive at the war
between continents which I base foreseen Siuce dcp.tmb.r, i >39.”^ The
prospect of suvw a war embi icing the whole \/oi!d excited Haler’s inicg-
illation with iu taste for the giandiose and sumulLtcd iniX '‘Cnse of
historic destiny winch was the diug on V'hich he fed Elated by the
feeling that his decisions would affect the lives of iiiilkons of human
beings, he declared m the speech of 1 1 December, in whxli lie announced
Germany’s declaration of war on Ana/ica: 'T can only be grateful to
^ C Lino's Dia}}\ page 405.

608

THL IS. \i HILMJ) 1

Providence that it eiitrustcd me with the leadei'-Jrp in this insioric
struggle which, foi the next ^\\c himdicd ur it liioi ,dhd vil! be
described as dccisne, not only lor the lir/'^ry of Geniruii bu: f -r the
whole of Europe and indeed the whole v;or!d* . * . A In . ♦' .lvJ revision on
a unique scale has been imposed on us bs the Cre. n <

Most of Huiefs speech on i 1 Dccem^'^er v as dc^ < .an to uhn-ie of the
America of President Roosevelt, whom he depicted as the cfLatiire of
the Jews, ile drew a corunanson Ivtwcen tiie succi*^. of iNai^-’ind
Sociaiism in rescuing Germsny from the and v\hat he des»

cribed as the catastrophic faiiaie oflhe Amedcan New ideiJ. h v i. the
desire to cover up this failuie widdi led Roose\eh to uneu Aiiieojen
attention by a provocatue foieign polr^}. Ti , ok! dem .;o’ e incks
were employed to iinderiinc this tompanson Oclwcjii Nazi Utnaany, a
“have-not’’ nation, and the wealthy United States:

1 understand only u^o well that a woi ld-w»de iU scparavjs Rcovoelt's
ideas and mine. Roc^evc!' comes fiom a i.eh fan o . ad Klueg to ihc U.«‘a
whose path is smotUhed in the dtmociacj o. 1 r Uy ifie cmaf ^ fa smal!,
poor family and kid Co mv v,a> by v\o^k and iisliy. \\ hca the Cheat
War came, Roosevelt occupied a position wheie h. cot U" kraiv only as
pleasant coiisequiTices, enjoyed by ihove vUio do on ... e>s while ollicrs
bleed. I was only one of those who earns d oui as an oi knaiy i Idiei

and actually returnad fiom the war jist as poor as I was in iiu riilamn of
1914. 1 shared the fate of millions, and Fiankkn Roi only tlic fate of
the so-called upper ten thousand."

At the end of his speech Huler announced that a row ag.ccnioni Irid
been concluded between Germany, Italy and Japan, biuduy duiu not to
conclude a separate armistice or peace wuh llie U.S.A. tu' with England,
without mutual consent

It was With Russia, how'cver, f »r moie Prin with :he Lhh:c J Slates or
Great Britain, that Hiller was sal! concerned in ti’c w inter of 1941-19-12.
The Russian coLmicr-oifcnsive, !aune!icd on 6 December, faced i mi
with a crisis, which, if m^bharJ’eJ, ?r aht well luuc to disasUr

“At that critical moment” says one of the divisional coiufsvmiJuis on the
Eastern Front, “the tioops were remembcuog v. ht! they is'xl heard
about IMapolcon’s retreat tom Moscow, and Iwmi: irwier the siiaJow of
it. If they had once begun a retreat it niigiit iia\c turned into a panic
flight.”-

Hitler rose to the occasion. By a lemarkable display of dcterniimUioii

^ General von Tip icL^kirch, quoted hs Pianec* p,uc 97.

® Liddell Halt: page 2o9.

L.H— 'V

“ Ibid , page Ja8.

609

'VAK-LOKD, 1939-1945

he succeeded in holding the Gennan lines firm. Whatever his respons-
ibility for the desperate situation in which the German Army now found
itself, and whatever the ultimate consequences of his intervention, m its
immediate effects it was his greatest achievement as a war-leader.

Hitler’s method of dealing with the crisis was simple. In face of the
professional advice of his generals and in total disregard of the cost to
the troops, he ordered the German annies to stand and fight where they
were, categorically refusing all requests to withdraw. This order was
enforced in the most ruthless fashion. Officers who failed to obey were
dismissed or court-martialled. Field-Marshal von Rundstedt was
ordered to hand over his command for withdrawing after the failure of
the attack on Rostov; Guderian, who commanded one of the panzer
armies on the Moscow front, was relieved of his command; Hoeppner,
another panzer general, was dismissed the Service, stripped of his rank
and decoratiors and forbidden to wear his uniform.

The toll taken by the Russians, and even more by the terrible winier,
was high. Thousands of German soldiers died of the cold, for Hitler had
obstinately refused to consider the possibility of a winter campaign or to
provide adequate clothing. In certain places it proved literally impossible
to carry out Hitler’s orders, and he liad reluctantly to accept the with-
drawal of the German positions after divisions had been decimated by
the Russian attacks and frost-bite. But the Russians did not break
through, and when the spring came to thaw the snows the German Aimy
still stood on a line deep in the interior of Russia. More than this, by
drawing on his own country and his allies, Hitler brought up the forces
on the Eastern Front to sufficient st'cngth to enable him to propose a
rcsumiition of the offensive in 1942. Some two hundred to two Imndred
and twenty German divisions — ^reduced m size from between tw'elve and
fifteen thousand men to betw'eca eight and ten thousand men — together
with another sixty-five divisions of more doubtful laiue from Finland,
Rumania, Hungarv and Italy, were available to cany out his plans for
the next campaigning season.’

The importance of the winter crisis of 1941-1942 is not, however,
adequately represented by its immediate mihtary results. It marks a
decisive stage in the development of Hitler's relations with the Army
which was to have considerable consequences for the future.

After the invasion of Russia there was no longer a High Command or
General Staff in Germany comparable with that over which Hindenbuig
and Ludendorff had presided in the First Woild War. Hitler ordered the
' Figun.-, £iven b> Milton Shiiiman: page 69.

610

It* u\ UHit\hU

C.-in-C. of the Army rjid his Staff (O.K.H.) to confine theniseives to the
conduct oi the war in the east (excluding hnland). The oincr fronts
were to be left to his own Supreme Cunmiand vi ihe Armed Forces
(O.K.W ), But the O.KAV. was in turn excluded fioiii the La rern Front,
and m any case lacked the indepeadeut authodiy winch the High
Command of the Army traditionally possessed in Cermany. Tht respon-
sibility for the conduct of operations was thus divided, and the strategic
picture of the war as a whole remained the concern of Hiller alone.

Hitler was far from being a fool in military matters. He had read
widely in military lileiature and he took an eager and well-iniormtd
interest in such technical matters as the design of weapons. His gifts as a
politician gave him notable advantages in war as well. He vvas a master
of the psychological side of war, quick to see the \aiiic of si!ipri’‘C, bald
in the risks he was prepared to take and receptive of unorthodox ideas.
The decisive support he gave to the expansion of Geimany's armoured
forces, his adoption of Raeder’s proposal for the occupation of Noiway,
and of Manstein’s for the thrust through the Ardennes, have alieady
been mentioned as illustrations of these gifts. Nor was Hitler far from the
truth when he argued that if he had listened to ilie High Command he
would never have pushed through Gemian rearmameni at the pace he
wanted, or have dared to take the risks which brought the German
Army its sensational triumphs of 1940'"! 94L

His faults as a military leader were equally obvious. He had loo Iktie
respect for facts, he was obstinate and opinionated. His experience in
the First World War, to which he attached undue iinporiaiice, had been
extremely limited. He had never commanded troops in the field or
learned how to handle armies as a staff officer. He Licked the trdiiimg to
translate his grandiose conceptions into concrete terms of operations.
The interest which he took in technical details, instead of compensating
for these deficiencies, only made them clearer. He was far loo interested
in such matters as the precise thickness of the concrete covering a line of
fortifications for a man whose job wa^ tu think dearly about the ovci-all
pattern of war. Moieovcr, he allowed himsdf lo become intoxicated
with figures, with the crude numbers of men or of armaoicius pro-
duction, which he delighted to repeat from memoiy without any attempt
to criticize or analyse them.

These were precisely the faults which the professional training of the
generals qnrkfied them to correct. A combination of Hitler’s often
brilliant intuition with the orthodox and methodical planning of the
General Staff could have been highly effective. But this was ruled out by
Hitler’s distrust of the generals.

611

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Well aware of the unique position which the Army held m German
history, and Us uiinvalled prestige as the embodiment of the national
tradition, he was quick to suspect its leaders of a lack of enthusiasm, if
not active disloyalty, towards the new r6gime. On several occasions
Hitler expressed his envy of Stalin, who had been able by his pre-war
purge of the Red Army to secure a Hxgh Command completely loyal to
Communism The German generals, Hitler complained, had no such
faith in the National Socialist idea ‘‘They have scruples, they make
objections and are not sufficiently with The German Officer Corps
was the last stronghold of the old conservative tradition, and Hitler never
forgot thi«’. His class-resentment was never far below the surface, he
knew perfectly well that the Officer Corps despised him as an upstart, as
“the Bohemian corporal,” and he responded with a barely concealed
contempt for the ‘‘gentlemen” who v/rote “von” before their names and
had never served as privates in the trenches.

To political distrust and social resentment was added Hitler’s invete-
rate suspicion of the expert, the professional staff officer who, like the
professional economisi, sav/ only difficulties. Nothing so infuriated
Hitler as the “objectivity” of the trained mind which refused to accept
his own liislinci for seeing all pi oblems in the simplest possible tei ms and
ins insistence on will-power as a universal answer. Hiilcr was a man who
found it difficult to take adv'ice and was intolerable to listen to criticism.
It required gieat tact to gel him to accept a view wliich differed from his
own, and this was a quality which fe\/ of the German generals possessed.
He was naturally airoganl, and he qiutkly bridled at any suggestion
lliat he was being talked down to by men who claimed to know more
than he did and did noi lecognize h* > gLiiius Thus, far fiom welcoming
the veiy chfidicni talents of his mihiary advisers as complementary to
his own, he despised them as imu hidebound by iiadition, as much his
inferiors in the understanding of war as Papeu and Hugenburg had been
in their gicsp of polnias.

So long as the German Aimy VvS successful the underlying lack of
confidence between Hiikr an-J liis generals could be papered over But
the moment Hitler foui'd Linucif fa. ed w ith a situation like that on the
Eastern Fioiit in the winier oi 1941-1942 he made u only too clear that
he had no faith at ull in the High ComnianG s ability to deal with it, and
fell that lie could rely solel;y on hiinv.lf Braiidiitscli, feeling that he was
placed in an impossible position, oillued his lesigiiation on 7 December.
After brusquely telling iiiin he was too busy to give an answer, ten days
later Hitler accepted his offer, and on the 19th announced that he would
^ q’uoUd by B H. Liddcil Hart: page 299.

612

1 ML b>i AC f!!J M p I

himself take over the commaiid-irpchief of the (i e in Pv.
field.

This step was the logical conckjAion lu of eorweii ie-ipc aii

power in hi; ow i hands winch linJer had pie ’ .d. ^ c ‘ i‘/31

In 1934, on the vieath of llindenbiro^, no lud oeeoni ^ 'he !r ad of he
State and Supreme Coinmaudci of 1 e Armci^ I oo.^s ao. v ff» < » i hm -
ceilor. In 1938, with the suppiesMon of the Vd.r .d/a he iH*d airo»
gated the functions of the foirser Miiw.er of ’’•vjr to a , own. II -/s
Command of the Aimed kAicis (OK.V\ ). Now he over the
High Command of the Aim> tO.K H.) as ^ i.'"

In 1934, at the tim:j of the R<-:hm Purge, ihe j a c ^^'Toiulatcd
themselves on the de.d they had made wiih i' d^n. ] i I /j h wljcn Pt.mi-
berg and Fnisch were renioscd, C\q] wore b^ouun' to i ’uh/e late
that they had acquired not a sein.an nor e\^ i a paiUiew Ik < m i ricr.
Now that masn\r form dlycvtcs deJ .uuihmav f fhe<, wil; ftt
aTairs of the State to the cOiiducI <T miut ly opci,, »ojo. To O a»eud
Haider Hulcr remarked:

This IiUlc cklhu of < pj i fo^rr! coinior: d is omething 1’ . jphnjv can do.

The Comma ide’Mu-Chit fs job .s t) him tlio ' m tha \ l.oi
Socialist idea, and I know of no general win 'ccrhl do is I v.iU*. .. (haw
For th‘d reason Fve decided to »akc o’ai c j.nmwnd « f c Arm/ 1 '' , ffg

So, seven years after his deadi, Roe^^' f » o!.|cei \va , read v 1 :r I he
Army Gleichgeschaliet — by the man who Lad had Ri C oi nmrJered.

Another consideration did lot escaoe d A] p f. ichnu Tn Biaiich-
itsch Hiller explained that, to save the sia:a:kaa '‘lir hul f;a m the
scales the entire conkderice v/hich he ei,jk\ ! in be Ihd ihj

Geiinan people Bniuchitsch was n\ de lo ap sc r as die r‘ icsp^ » i f b!e
for such a situation (‘ver Iwwiipa ‘>Msen, a^u Ihh w wacfuilv
cultivated by Rider hanscli. lac Ihiclum codd do no wrom If ihe
promise c*r victoiy by the aulumn Inal proved if i uy, it was Hecausc
the High Comm ind, not the Fucincr, had f.ded After \i iia'p HaicFs
headquarters three months later, GoeMw!% vvio c in his diaiy:

The Fuehrer spoke of Biaachiisch only m Wims of o ctcnipt. A vain,
cowardly wretch \vh(* could not even aw‘ die slUi u oin, much less
master d. Cy his cons.ani in cifcrenie and con^islchl di^Nisiwdfcno ^ iic com-
pietely spoded the entr ■* pl’tn foi the i.cWin car paign un u w. ^ (’“cgned
With crystal ciaiity by lic Firhiei. fh^ Fuehnn hu! a plan tlwl was boiiiid
to lead to vieWay. Had Braiichmch done wiiai w:.s aok ‘d of hun and wimi

MIcd!ei:pwr4?

^ EKintl-’i oil’s evidence at Niuemheoj; N.? , pait XM, page 35,

613

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

he really should have done, our position in the east today would be entirely

different.^

Supremely confident in his own powers, Hitler did not stop to reflect
that, in his new position, it would be less easy to find scapegoats in the
future. For even when he had been most calculating in his exploitation of
the image of the inspired Fuehrer, Hitler had never lacked belief in the
truth of the picture he was projecting. But as success followed upon success
the element of calculation was completely overshadowed by the convic-
tion that he was what he had so long claimed to be, a man marked out
by Providence and endowed with more than ordinary gifts. The image he
had himself created took possession of him.

This conviction was immeasurably strengthened by the experience of
the winter months of 1941-1942. In the speech which he delivered on
30 January, 1942, at the Iicigliit of the crisis, he spoke of his “unbounded
confidence, confidence m myself, so that nothing, whatever it may be,
can throw me out of the saddle, so that nothing can shake me.”-

Gocbbels was shocked, when he saw Hitler in March, at the toll which
those months had taken of Hitler’s health: “I noted that he had already
become qiuie grey and that merely talking about the cares of the winter
makes him seem to have aged very much . . He complained of bouts
of giddiness and told Goebbels that he ne\ei wanted to see snow again:
it had become physically repulsive to him None the less the ordeal had
not broken Hitler, and the success of his intervention in checking the
Russian counter-offensive exalted his sense of mission and his confidence
in his military genius. After the v/inter of 1942 he was less prepared than
ever to listen to advice — or even infomialion — ^wliich ran contrary to
his own wishes. This was the reverse side of the strength which he derived
from his belief in himself— and it was the weakness winch was to destroy
him, for m the end it destioyed all power of self-criticism and cut him off
from all contact with reality.

This can already be seen in 1941. For, if Hitler saved the Geiman
Army in the winter of that y\ar, it was puncipally as the result of his
miscalculation that it hrd ever been placed m such a position. He insisted
on the iirs'asion of Russia in face of the doubts of many of his advisers;
he refused to concentrate his forces agamst Moscow until it was almost
the end of the campaigning season, and he then obstinately persisted in
prolonging the attempt to capture the capital up to and beyond the
danger point.

It was inevitable that a man in Hitler’s position should refuse to admit

^ Goebbels Dnnes, edited by Louis P. Lochnei (london, 1948), page 92.

B R.r. Monitoring Report. ** Goebbels Dianes, page 92.

014

tk;-. u \ ^vi'isiLv; o . \i. I i

in public that he had nude m, stakes and acck a scapi.^oat in Brauchit^ch;
but he refused to make such an admission even to hirnbc'.i', and so lost the
chance to learn from his mistakes. His fatal facility for convincing him-
self of the truth of whatever he wanted to believe soon ccated the iii'-
shakeable conviction that the failure of 1941 had been due to the shoi t-
comings of the Army High Command, and that, now he had taken over
the direction of operations himself, 1942 would inlallibly produce the
knock-out blow which had eluded him the previous year. Thus, as beiici
m Nazi victory claims weakened m Germany under the ineluctable
pressure of events, it only grew stronger in Hitler’s own mind, in de-
fiance of events, until he became the last victim of his uvv n propaganda

This same sen'^e of confidence was equally marked in Hiucr's private
conversation duung these m.sntiis. An amhu’ogv of hu, uible-talk ha .
been published since the war, based upon the .lute-. t.ikeii at t!ie (ime by
two men who were picsent at the I •.l.■hrci’s headquarters from July,
1941, to the end of July, 1942. Some at least of their version-, were seen
and approved by Hitler himself, and tliere can be little doubt of iheir
authenticity.

Most of the conversations took place i.fter tlic middu> or evening
meal, either at D'olfsschcmze in East Prussia, or at Hitler’.-, Ukrainian
H.Q. near Winniza, although there arc also records of lalks in the Reich
Chancellery or on the Fuehrer’s special train. The form i.s the same in
every case, a monologue listened to in re-%pcctful silence by those who
had attended the meal. If there were mtenuptions— and liiere are not
likely to have been many — ^they were not considered suflkiently impor-
tant to merit reporting. The range of subjects touched on is wide. The
greater part of the four hundred printed pages is devoted to politics and
war, but there are shorter sections which record Hitler’s opi nions on moral
questions, human leiations, religion, education and the arts. His views
on the relative merits of Bruno Walter and Furtwiinglcr as orchestral
conductors are duly recorded alongside those on the correct training of
dogs, the pernicious habit of smoking and the advantages of a vegetarian
diet.

The first impression left by reading tlie Table-Talk is of the remarkable
extent to which Hitler’s ideas in 1941-1942 remained the same as in the
1920s when he wrote Mein Kampf, or wlien he talked to Rauschning in
the 19.'’0s. The struggle for existence is a law of Nature; hardness is the

615

'WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

supreme virtue; the key to history lies in race; power is the prerogative
of a racial elite. There js the old scorn for the Christian virtues, dis-
missed as the altemoi of liie underdog to impose shackles on the strong;
tliere is the old belief in force as the decisive factor in politics and the
basis of the Laropean New Order which he is founding; there is the old
hatred of the Jew as the eternal enemy of Aryan ‘‘culture” and the
Germanic peoples.

The second impression is of the intolerant dogmatic way in which he
voices his ojiinicns on every conceivable subject, without the hint of a
suggestion that on some he might be less well informed than other
people or that a diflcient view might also be possible.

But the mosi lasang impression is of the vulgarity of his mmd, as
commonplace as it was brutal, as unabashed as it was ignorant. A single
example will be sufficient to illustraie this quality. One evening Hitler
was discussing the need to warn the risng generation against what he
called the “racial danger ” On these gi ounds alone, he went on, he would
peimit the corjtinualion of the Obeiammergaii Passion Play. “Nowhere
has the Jewish danger in the case of the Roman Empire been so vividly
depicted as in the represcrtalion of Pontius Pilate in the 0 jcrammergau
perfoimonce. His supeiiouly as a Roman, both racially and mlellect-
iially, JS so appe'*'mit that he stands like a reck amid the Near Eastern
scum and swaim ’ ^ In his recognition of the value of this drama for the
cnliglhcnrricni of the coming generation, Hiller added, he was a hundred
per cent Christian.

The Hitlei of the Tischgespiaelie indeed reveals nothing new; it is
the same harsh and cncoiith hgurc already familiar from the pages of
Mem L mpf or llie earl est of his speeches. Success had aiteied hllle of
the cssciilial Hiller, and as for the sct-bacL of the winter, it left his belief
111 hiS own cocksure genius slrenglliened rather than impaired.

Tliift was the niocd in v/luch Hitler began to draw up his plans for the
new CanipJigiCipg season of H'ue vvhen Gocbbels saw him at his head-
qiiaitcrs in March, he reported:

The Fiiclirci agrni has a poifxtly cleai plan of campaign for the coming
spi iiig end summer. He docs i.ot want to over-extend the war. HiS aims aie
the Caucasus, Lciungiad and Moscow. . . . Possibly this may mean a
kindred yeais’ wa m t' e ea^ , but ihat nem noi woriy us.

V/hen Holder told him that the Anny Intelligence Service had infor-
mation that si\ or seven hiMdred tar.ks a month were coming out of the
Russian factories, Hitler thumped the table and said it was impossible.
^ TiscMes}jiJche, Ho. 156, pages 3i4-5. ^Goeu^eh Dimie\, pages 92-3.

IIII bNACiiIL\ ID LMPIKE

The Russians were ''dead,” This winter oifea.*so had curLsamid the last of
their strength^ and it was only a question of givuia a pnsi to u'jal was
already tottering. Nietzsche and Ciausewitz weic lii wpporl of ho

“heroic” decisionT

Those geneials who favoured standing on Tie ddcnsite, >iich as Rund-
stedt and Leeb, theCommanders-in-Chierori tl.esoullicrn and Avfihcsii
fronts, were removed in the course of the Winter, and [iTdei issued
emphatic orders io prepare for a resumption of the oRun .ive.

The Home Front, no less than the Aiiny, needed its iadli in the
Fuehrer’s leadership restored, and in the first four iiiuiiilis of 1942
Flitlcr found time to make llucc big speeches,

Of the first, delivered on the annuersia^y of 30 Jaiiinry, Goebbeh
wrote. “The Meeting was as successful as those in 1930, !93i ami 1032.

. . . The Fuehrer has charged the eniijc nulioii as though d weic n* storage
battery. ... As long as he lives and is among us in good hc'iith, as long
as he can give us the strength of his spun, no evil t.m touch
At the second, delivered on Heroes Memorial Oav, in Ma:ch, Hitki
declared. ‘'‘¥/e all feel at this moment ihegiandcui of (he tiiiito in whuh
we live. A world is being forged anew.’'

But it was in his speech of 26 Apiil tfiat Hitler, wdh ihe wmtei now
behind him, gave the fullest expiession io his renewed faith in Geimanj’s
eventuni triumph. This time lie mide no attempt to conccai how' near
the German Army had been to disaster. He ddihenitcly exaggerated
the seriousness of the situation on the Eastern Fionl in order io Ihrow
into more effective contrast his own decision to assume peisona! respon-
sibility and the news that the crisis bad been mastered. “Deputies.”
he told the packed and excited meeting of the Reichstag in the Spori-
palast^ “A world struggle was decided during the winter'. . Then,
picking op the allusion io Napoleon’s Retreat frinii Mo.sciu.v, so often
invoked during the winter, he added: “We 1 jve mastered u destiny
which broke another man a hundred and ihinv vl.js agio,”^

Hitler’s picture of the conditions under which the Army had fmghi
ill the east duiing the past few months was a pi elude to a demand for
still greater powers to be vested in himself, the couiileipait on the
Home Front to liis decision to take over the personal conduct ol oper-
ations on the Eastern Front.

The law, duly passed by the Reichstag without discussion, prodaioicd :
The Fuehrer must have ail the rights dunanded by liini to achieve victoiv.
Tbeiefore—withoui being bcuud by existing legal rcgiiiations - an hi

^ Ilaldci 5h Dunes, page 27.

^ B B C Moiiitoiing Report, ^ ibiJ.

L IL~V'

617

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

cai>acity as Leader of the Nation, Supreme Commander of the Armed
Foices, Head of the Government and supreme executive chief, as Supreme
Justice and Leader of the Party — ^the Fuehrer must be in a position to force,
with all the means at his disposal, every German, if necessary, wliether he be
common soldier or officer, low or high official or judge, leading or subor-
dmate official of the Party, worker or employer, to fulfil his duties. In case
of violation of these duties the Fuehrer is entitled, legardless of rights, to
mete out punishment and remove the offender from his post, rank and
position without introducing prescribed procedures.^

Hitler’s request for a confirmation of the arbitral y power which he
already possessed is at fiist sight puzzling Tiie explanation of the decree
of 26 Apiil, 1942, is to be found in Goebbels’ Dianes, in which the
Minister of Propaganda continually complains of the shortcomings of
the State and Party administration, and of the failure to organize Ger-
man economy and civilian life to meet the demands of “total” war.
During his visit to headquarteis in March, for instance, Goebbels
pressed Hitler to adopt much more drastic measures to control war-
profiteeiing and the black market, to increase production, reduce
the swollen staffs of overgrown ministries, and provide additional
manpower.

Goebbels and Hitler laid the blame for these shortcomings on the
conservatism of the German civil service and judiciary. But they were
only paying the penalty for treating the administration of the State as
“spoils” for the Nazi Party once it had come to power. The boasted
totalitarian organization of the National Socialist State was m practice
riddled with corruption and inefficiency iiuder the patronage of the
Nazi bosses, fiom men like Goering and Himmler, down to the Gau-
leiters and petty local racketeers of every town in Germany. At every
level there were conflicts of authority, a fight for power and loot, and the
familiar accompaniments of gangster rule, “protection,” graft and the
‘Take-off.” The Nazis did not change their nature when they came to
power, and they remained what tney had always been, gangsters, spivs
and bulhcs — only now in control of ihc resources of a great State. It is
astoiii Jung that they had not ruined Germany long befoie the end of
the war. The fact that they did not was due to the stolid virtues and
organizing ability of the permanent officials of the civil ^'ervice, of local
government and industry, who, liov,ever much abused, continued, like
the German Officer Corps, to serve their new masters with an unques-
tioning docility

Hitler was the last man to remedy this situation. Without administra-

'N.D i,961-PS.

618

lUL UNACHitVED LMMRf

tive gifts, disliking systematic work and indifferent to corniplion,
Hitler was at the same time far too jealous of his aiithorit}’ lo nia!.c any
effective delegation of his powers.

In the 1930s Hitler spoke of the Party as “a chosen Older of Leadei-
ship” whose task was ‘ffo supply from its membership an unbroken
succession of personalities fitted to undeitake the supreme Icaiership
of the State.” On closer inspection the new elite was far from impressive.
Even amongst the Reich leaders of the Party there were few men of
ability, integrity or even education. One of the exceptions was Goebbds.
Goering, too, undoubtedly displayed ability m 1933-1934, but by 1942
this had long been overlaid by the habits of indolence and the coirup-
tioii of power. Men like Ley, Ribbentrop, Funk, Darre and Rosenberg
were wholly unfitted to hold positions of respunsibiiity, not to speak of
lesser figures like Frank, the notorious Governor-General Poland, or
Viktor Lutze, the Chief of Staff of the S.A., killed in a motor accident
while on hiS way back from a black-marketing expedition, but accorded
a hero’s funeral by the Fuehrer on his way to the Nazi Valhalla. As for
the Gauleiters, those gross and seedy Pashas ui' the thousand-year
Reich, some of them were incapable of appearing in public withoul
scandal, while all, almost without exception, lined their pockets, ran the
local rackets and, as Goebbels remarked, “had only to be gnen the old
ius primae metis to enjoy powers greater than those of the most absolute
princes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”^

In February, 1942, however, Hitler had the luck to make one of the
few good appointments he ever made. Albert Speer, whom he chose as
Minister for Armaments and Munitions in the place of Dr, Todt (lolled
in an air accident), was a young architect who had allracted Hitler's
attention and had been set to complete the new Reich Chancellery.
Disinterested as well as able, he soon showed himself to be an organizer
of remarkable powers and wns entrusted with one job after another
until he became virtual dictator of the whole of German war production.
Finding himself faced with great difficulties in the way of procuiiiig
manpower from the obstruction of the Gauleiters, Speer shrewdly
suggested that one of th^m should be made responsible for increasing
Germany’s labour force. This led m March, 1942, to the appointment as
Plenipotentiary-General for Manpower of Fritz Sauckcl, a lorincr sailor
and a Party Member since 1921, who vv.iS Gauleiter of Thuringia, Fhese
measures, in particular the powers gi\’en to Speer and the use he made
of them, produced a sensational rise m German war-production m 1942

^ The diary of Rudolf Seuiniici : Goehbeh, the Man Next to Hitho (Londoii, 1947),
page 86,

619

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

and 1943 without which Hitler could never have continued the war
at all.

In the 1942 campaign a bigger part was to be played by the armies of
the satellite States, and at the beginning of the year Goering was sent on
a visit of several days to Italy, the leading satellite. ‘‘At the station,”
noted Ciano, “he wore a great sable coat, something between what
motorists wore in 1906 and what a high-grade prostitute wears to the
opera. Hitler had not seen the Duce since August, 1941 , and, now that
the Winter crisis was over, he thought it desirable to remove any doubts
m Mussolini’s mind and to revive his flagging faith in an Axis victory.
Accordingly the Duce and Qano again set out for the north at the end
of April, 1942, and spent two days with Hitler at Salzburg.

They were entertained this time not at the Berghof, but in Schloss
Klessheim, the former Baroque palace of the Prince Bishops of Salz-
burg, tastefully furnished with hangings, carpets and furniture brought
from France. Ciano reported that Hitler looked tired and grey, but he
was even more impressed by his loquacity.

Hitler talks, talks, talks, talks. Mussolini suffers— he, who is in the habit of
talking himself, and who instead has to remain silent. On the second day,
after lunch, when everything had been said, Hitler talked uninterruptedly
for an hour and forty minutes. He omitted absolutely no argument* war and
peace, religion and philosophy, art and histoiy — Only Cavallero, who is a
phenomenon of seivility, pretended he was listening in ecstasy, coiitinuaiiy
nodding his head in approval. The Geiinans, pooi people, have to endure it
evciy day, and I am ceiUiin there isn’t a gesture, a word or a pause they don’t
know by heait. Geneial Jodi, after an epic struggle, finally went to sleep on
the divan. Kietel was yavviimg, but succeeded m keeping his head up. He
was too close to Hnici to let himself go as he would have liked to do.^

The discussions followed familiar lines. There was the usual tour
cr horizon^ the familku appeasement of Italian suspicions of France
But most of the time Fiitler talked about Russia, freely comparing him-
scii to Napoleon — to the laUc’T vusadianiage and Mussolmfs chagrin;
telling the Duce in private. “I believe that I am m the protection of Provi-
dence,” and citing the escape from catastrophe m the winter as proof.

On liie way back Mussolini complained that he could not see \viiy
Hitler had asked them to mcd'c the journey. Resentment at Ms own
reduced role was begiiming to be tinged wiiii the uneasy fear that he,
as well as the Germans, would ha\c lo pay for the mistakes of an over-
confident Hiller.

^ C.a(!o\ Diary, page 430. - Ibid , pages 462-3.

620

Tllh U\ACinL\ i 0 l^MIMRL

For two yeais after the invasion oT PvU^^ia Ilaier\ iimr was almo'sl
completely taken up with the dnocaon of the (/t the Eastern Vnnit.
which he obviously regarded as the decisuc theatre of operatHm.. Hh
interest in other theatres was intermittent imal in 194 j, the lo a oi \c rl!i
Africa and the collap.^c of Italy forced him to rLeogr»«/e tna: it ;\a, a*
world alliance with which he was at war and that he iiia ! fijh* the
south and west as well as in the cast, on the soa and lo the air no !ev> iiian
on land

The fundamental weikness of Hndefs stralCLy was tins failuie to
grasp in time the unity of the war, the negieci iinal loo late of the
Meditcnanean and the Atlantic, the iindcicsauiaic of Biuain\ rc-
cupeialivc powm and America’s slrengdi. Mucli ha*, been wriUen of tiie
inadequacy of Hitler’s strategy in the ! lier ofilie war, but by then
the disparity between Germany’s and tier opponenb’ resource,^ Wd*» so
great that mesilably he was on the defensive. Hitler's aai lailiirc as a
strategist was earlier, in the years before the Umled Smtes and Ru-sn
had begun to develop their full strength, or Biuiui imd fiiily rccovtaeJ
from the set-backs of 1940. it was then tlu. lie siill enjo} ed i!ic loilialivc
and still possessed a superiority in force. Instead of U'h.ig these to the
best effect, he threw aw'ay his remporary advaniages, ifi the lirst place,
by the decision to attack Rusmu; and in tin- second pi tu a conse-
quence of tins first mistake, by his neglect of mlic* diealics in
wliidi the Biiiish and the Aniei leans were evcnKiially to make then o\.n
poweiful contribution to his defeat.

Before the attack on Russia Hiller ha ' evad.td R'eJiT\
for intensir>iiig the war in the Mediternui.an, with toe pionusc to take
up these plans after Russia was ddCvdcJ. Vlthough llidcr \\a. fumvJ
to send stronger foices to the Medilcnauein Iheulre, ihrougnoiit 1911
and the winter of 1941-1942, the sole purpose behind these mou's w'as
defensive, to pi event an Italian collap^'C in Noitli Afiica. At the end of
the winter, hov/ever, Racder returned to the attack and succeeded in
rousing Hiller’s interest m the Mediterranean, largely because of the

621

War-lord, 1939-1945

giandiose way ia which the plan (known as the “Great Plan”) was
dressed up as a drive through the Middle East to join the Japanese in
a vast encirclement of Britain’s Asian Empire. Hitler agreed to a two-
fold operation for the summer of 1942 — Operation Hercules for the
capture of Malta (the key to the security of Rommel’s supply route), and
Operation Aida, the renewal of the desert offensive against Egypt, Suez
and beyond to Persia. These two operations were to serve as the prelude
to the “Great Plan,” and they were among the subjects Hitler discussed
with Mussolini at Salzburg in April.

The operations began well with Rommel’s capture of Tobruk and the
invasion of Egypt. By 30 June, 1942, a month after the offensive had
opened, the Afrika Korps reached the El Alamein line, only sixty-five
miles from Alexandria. But Hitler showed a curious reluctance to
undertake the second part of the plan, the assault on Malta. He refused
to see the force of Raeder’s and Kesselrmg’s argument that without the
capture of the island Rommel’s supply position must remain precarious.
He had already postponed Operation Hercules until Rommel could
capture Tobruk and clear Cyrenaica: now he postponed it again,
proposing to starve and bomb Malta into submission and arguing that
Its capture was no longer necessary with Rommel on the verge of
occupying Egypt.

Thus the impetus of the opening weeks of the campaign was lost.
As the summer passed, the British had time to build up their forces in
Egypt and to strengthen Malta; the losses on the Italy-North African
run began to mount again. By the autumn the Afrika Korps was still
at El Alamein and Malta still unsubdued.

At the beginning of Septembei Hitter saw Rom m el (who was on sick
leave) and reassured him; “I mean to give Africa all the support needed.
Never fear, we are going to get Alexandria all right.”^ But in fact
Hitler’s interest in the MedUerranean and North Africa, never more
than fitful, was beginning to waver again. In 1941 he sacrificed the
chance of sweeping victories in the south to the dream of defeating
Russia in a single campaign. In 1942, while agreeing to the “Greab
Plan,” he never once displayed that energy and singleness of purpose
m forcing it through winch had held the Eastern Front firm in the winter.
Jo Hitler, until he was about to lose it for good. North Africa remained
a sideshow by comparison with the real war in the east. He never grasped
Its importance in the total picture of the war, as Churchill had done
even when Britain’s power was reduced to its lowest ebb.

' Qu'jted by Dismond Young Rommel (London, 1950), page 171.

622

THE UNACHHvtD

In fact, for all his talk of a v/ar between continents Hitler showed
little understanding of sea-power, the element wliicii bound togethei
the alliance which opposed h»m. As long as he held the initiative ho
went on thinking in terms of war as he had known it on the Weslern
Frpnt in 1914-1918, as a land war. The unique seiies of the
of the Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs thus leprcswiiis in fact a
record of failure on the part of the Naval High Command in its
dealings with the Supreme Commander of the German Armed
Forces.

For years Admiral Raeder had tried to persuade Hitler that GermanyS
most dangerous enemy was Great Britain, and that the one certain way of
defeating her was by attacking her trade routes and blockading hci
ports. Even after the directive for Barharossa had been issued, Raeder
argued: “There are serious doubts as to the advisability of Opvruthm
Barbarossa before the overthrow of Britain. . . . What is being done
for U-boat and naval-air construction is much too little* . . . Britain’s
ability to maintain her supply lines is the decisive factor fui the outcome
of the war.”

This was in December, 1940. Hitler’s reply was to promise Raeder —
as in the case of the Mediterranean — that once Russia had been de-
feated he should have aU he asked for. The Army’s demands could
then be cut down, and German war production concentrated on the
needs of the Navy and Air Force. Meanwhile the Navy had to be
content with what it could scratch together in face of the competition
of the Army and the Air Force. Raeder was not allowed to establish a
naval air force, nor was he able to secure the effective co-operation of
the Luftwaffe in attacks on British shipping, harbours and shipyards.
Goering, who was on bad terms with the Conimandcr-in-Chief of the
Navy, was a law unto himself, and Fliller simply lei the quarrel between
the two Services drag on.

The Navy was short of U-boats as well as of aircraft Up to February,
1941, Raeder found it impossible to keep more than some six U-boats
at sea at a time. By the end of 1941 this had been increased to sixty.
With these limited forces the U-boats achieved remarkable successes
in 1942, sinking over nine hundred vessels, of six and a quarter million
gross tons, nearly three times the figure for 1941. These results were so
striking that Hitler was converted and began to talk of the U-boats
as the fector which would decide the outcome of the war. In May, 1942,
Doenitz, the Flag Officer U-boats, was summoned to attend the Fuehrer
conferences for the first time. When Raeder demanded that no workiiian
engaged on U-boat construction or repair should be drafted for military

623

WAR-LORD, 1939-19^ 5

service. Hitler at once agreed, and more than three iiundrci U-boats
were in fact completed during 1942.

But Hitler's interest in the possibilities of the U-boats came too late.
Although the shipping losses between the beginning of 1942 and the
spring of 1943 taxed the Allies to the limit, they now had at their
disposal resources which Hitler, deeply committed in Russia, could not
hope to equal. By the middle of 1943 Britain and the U.S.A. were on
the way to establishing a superiority in methods of defence (both by sea
and air) which neither the Geiman Navy nor the Luftwaffe was able
to reduce and which was steadily reinforced during the later years of
the war. The great hopes which Hitler began to entertain of the U-boats
and which he signalized by the appointment of Doenitz to succeed
Raeder as Comrnander-in-Chief of the Navy were stultified. In the end
the Battle of the Atlantic, which might — as Raeder had so often argued
— ^have proved decisive, was destined to prove one of his greatest failures.
It was a failure which, like that to exploit the opportunities of 1940-
1942 in the Mediterranean, sprang from Hitler's defective grasp of the
war as a whole and which was confirmed by the decision to invade
Russia, a campaign into which a disproportionate amount of Germany’s
resources in men and m? chines was drawn at the expense of every other
front.

On the third front, the western seaboard of Europe and Northern
Africa, Hitler was not blind to the threat of an Anglo-American lancing,
but the problem of how to defend so vast a coastline was one to which
he never found a saLsfactoiy i nsv/er. Moreover, in 1942 he badly mis-
judged the diiection in which to look for an attack. For, from the autumn
of 1941, he displayed a growing conviction that Britain and the U.S.A. —
possibly m co-operation with Russia — ^were planning a large-scale
assault on Norway.

Tiieie was little enough eviderxe to support such a view, but Hitler
insisted in oracular fashion that ''Norway ’s the zone of destiny in this
war.” Troops, heavy artillery, airciaft and na\al forces were accordingly
dispatched to strengthen the Norwegian coastal defences. So impressed
was Fliiiei by his IntLution that he refused Raeder permission to send
the German surface fleet into the Atlantic on commerce raiding, and
insisted on the risks of a passage through the Strait of Dover in broad
daylight in order to get the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau
and the cruiser Pnnz Eugen from Brest to Norway. Virtually the whole
of the Geiman surface fleet was concentraled in Norwegian waters. Not
until 1943 was Hitler prepared tacul> — but never openly — to admit

626

the unachieved empire

that he had been wrong. By then the allied armada had safely landed an
army in North-west Alrica, unmolested by the German naval forces a
thousand miles away to the north, where they remained vainly keeping
guard against an attack which never came.

Against a much more ominous threat from the west wiiich began to
develop in 1942 Hitler found himself without adequate defences. The
German Air Force, already roughly handled in the Battle of Britain,
never recovered from the demands made on it in Russia. It was no
longer able to prevent the bombing of German industrial towns by the
R.A.F. with forces of up to and over a thousand planes. The first
thousand-bomber raid, on Cologne, took place on the night of 30-31
May, 1942, and it was a portent for the future. The war was beginning
to come home to Germany.

In dealing with these other fronts we have been talking of the later
months of 1942 and even anticipating the events of 1943 But at the time
when the Germans renewed their Russian offensive in the summer of
1 942 few of the difficulties which were to become apparent by the end of
the year had yet appeared. The U-boat war was going w'ell, Rommel had
resumed his offensive in North Africa, and a big Russian attack at
Kharkov in May had been defeated.

Hitler had chosen the south as the main theatre for his operations on
the East Front in 1942, and powerful German forces drove fast down
the corridor between the Don and Donetz rivers. While one wing pushed
cast towards the Volga at Stalingrad, the other drove past Rostov and,
covering another four hundred and fifty miles, reached the Caucasus and
the more westerly oilfields round Maikop in the first half of August.

Hitler moved his H.Q. to Wiuniza, in the Ukraine, during July, and
from here he followed the progress of his armies with m )unting excite-
ment. Now, he declared, his faith and dc-lerminalion in Uie winter had
been justified: Russia was on the verge of defeat.

Hitler, hov/ever, made exactly the same mistake he i'ud made the year
before. Overestimating the Geiman sliength, he did i. I limit himself to
his original objective, to reach the Volga and capture Stalingrad, but
tried to break into the Caucasus with its valuable (.ilfieids as well, thus
dividing his forces and ending by gaining neither Stalingrad nor the oil.
At the end of July, when the 4th Panzer Army could probably have
taken Stalingrad without much difficulty, it was diverted south to

627

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

support Kieist's drive for the Caucasus. When it was freed to return
north the Russians had gathered sufficient strength to hold Stalingrad.
A more methodical attempt had then to be made to take the city, anrl
by September the Battle for Stalingrad was beginning to assume propor-
tions which made Haider doubt whether its capture was worth the effort
or the risks. For the city’s name and its historical association with Stalm
during the Civil War made the Russians as eager to defend it as Hiller
was to take it. A battle of prestige was thus joined between the two
regimes. As the Germans fought their way forward they exposed their
long-drawn-out northern flank to grave danger from a Russian counter-
attack across the Don. The German forces were so stretched that the
last reserves had to be committed, and by September the greater part of
this northern flank, running from Voronezh to Stalingrad and covering
several hundred miles, was held by Hungarian, Italian and Rumanian
divisions.

Haider’s attempts to point out the dangers of the situation led to a
repetition of the scenes of the previous autumn and winter. Hitler
accused the General Staff of cowardice, ridiculing the Intelligence
reports of growing Russian strength in preparation for a massive
counter-attack.

When a statement was read to him [Haider recalls] which showed that
Stahn would still be able to muster another one to one ard a quarter million
men in the region noith of Stalingrad (besides half a million more m the
Caucasus), and which proved that the Russian output of first-line tanks
amounted to twelve bundled a month, Hitler flew at the man who was
reading with clenched fists and foam m the corneis of bis mouth, and
forbade him to lead such idiotic twaddled

Even a chdd could see the use Stahn was likely to make of the armies
he was building up behind the front, but Hitler refused categorically
to admit that such forces existed. As Haider justly remarks, “his de-
cisions had ceased to ha\e anything in common with tbc principles of
strategy and operations as they had been recognized for generations
past. They were the product of a violent nature follownog its momentary
impulses, a nature which acknowledged no bounds to possibility and
which made its wish the father of its deed.”- When Haider recommended
the breaking off of the attack at the end of September, Hiller dismissed
hiin and leplaced him as Chief of the Army General Staff (O.K.H.) by
General Zciizler

Meanwhile, the thrust into the Caucasus had been halted short of the
mam oiiileids by stificnmg Russian resistance. Hitler, beside himself
^ Haider: page 57. ^ ibid., pages 55-6.

628

THE UNACHIEVED EMPIRE

with impatience, sent Jodi to investigate. Wlien Jodi, on his return,
ventured to defend the Commander-in-Chief m the Caucasus, Field-
Marshal List, Hitler flew into another of his fits of fur> What par-
ticularly angered him was Jodi’s citation of his own earlier directives
to prove that List had only been obeying orders.

From that day on Hitler refused to eat any more with his .staiT
officers at the common table. An S.S. officer was ordered to be present
at every conference and stenographers were to take down every word.
For several months Hitler declined to shake hands with Jodi, and on
30 January, 1943, he sent word that he was to be replaced. By a rare
stroke of irony, Paulus, the man Hitler chose as Jodi’s successor, the
next day surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad, a fitting comment
to the end of this chapter in the history of Hitler’s relations with his
generals.

By the autumn of 1942 all Hitler’s urging could not alter the fact
that the German advance at Stalingrad, as well as in the Caucasus and
North Africa, had been brought to a standstill. This time it was more
than a temporary interruption; it was the end of Hitler’s offensives.
The climacteric had been passed, and for the first time since ho pro-
claimed Germany’s rearmament in 1935, more than seven years before,
the initiative passed out of Hitler’s hands, never to return. It had been
a remarkable career while it lasted. At the moment when the tide
turned in the autumn of 1942 Hitler was undisputed master of the greater
part of continental Europe, with his armies threatening the Volga, the
Caucasus and the Nile. For the man who had begun by peddling third-
rate sketches m the back-streets of Vienna this was no small acliieve-
ment. But now the price had to be paid for the methods of trea.-hcry
and violence by which it had been accomplished — and it was relentlessly
exacted.

On the night of 23 October, 1942, the British 8th Army under General
Montgomery attacked the German lines at El Alamein and after twelve
days’ heavy fighting broke out into the desert beyond.

On the night of 7-8 November British and American troops landed
along the coast of Morocco and Algeria, and within a few da>s occupied
the whole of French North Africa as far as the Tunisian frontier.

On 19 and 20 November three Russian Array Groups under the com-
mand of Generals Vatutin, Rokossovsky and Eremenko attacked on a
huge front north and south of Stalingrad and w'ithin five days succeeded
in encircling twenty-two German divisions between the Volga and the
Don.

<529

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Taken together, these three operations mark the turning-point in the
war and the seizure of the initiative by the Allies. Henceforward Hitler
was forced to stand upon the defensive.

The Fuehrer was slow to recognize, and even slower to admit, the
importance of the operations now begun. On 8 November, after the
break-through at El Alamein and on the actual day of the allied landings
m North-west Africa, he appeared in Munich for the customary celebra-
tion of the 1923 putsch. Drawing the familiar contrast between the
Imperial Germany of 1918 and the Third Reich, he declared:

He who was then the Kaiser was a man lacking the strength to resist his
enemies. But in me they have found an adversary who does not even think
of the word “capitulation”. Ever since I was a boy it has always been my
habit — originally perhaps a bad one, but in the final resort a virtue — to
have the last word. All our enemies may rest assured that while the Germany
of that time (1918) laid down its arms at a quarter to twelve, I on principle
have never finished before five minutes past twelve.*

None the less, despite his confident tone, it was noticeable that Hitler
was already arguing on the defensive, and at the end of his speech he
went out of his way to answer those who criticized liim for not speaking
more frequently. Underneath the boasting and the sarcasm a note of
anxiety was clearly to be detected.

Hitler’s very success in halting a German retreat in the winter of
1941-1942 now proved a fatal legacy. His one idea was to hold fast.
He telegraphed to Rommel (who had been summoned from hospital,
to take over the Afnka Ko/ps): “The position requires that the El
Alamein position be held to the last man. There is to be no retreat, not so
much as one millimetre. Victory or death!”^ When Rommel flew back to
Germany at the end of November and told Hitler that Africa was lost,
and the only course was to get the Afnka Korps out to fight in Italy,
Hitler shouted at him that he was a defeatist and his troops cowards.
Generals who had made the same sort of suggestion in Russia, he added,
had been put up against a wall and shot. Despite his categorical
orders, however, neither Rommel nor anyone else could halt the Allies’
advance.

The allied landings in French North Africa in November took
Hitler completely by surprise. He immediately summoned Laval, as
well as Ciano for a meeting at Munich, Laval’s efforts to be friendly
were coldly rebuffed. When Laval hedged, Hitler bluntly informed him
that the Germans would occupy Tumsia at once, together with the rest
* B.B.C. Monitoring Report. ■“ Quoted by Desmond Young: Rommel, page 175
630

TUL UNACHIEVLD EMPIRE

of Unoccupied France. At last Mussolini had hi» way o';er France, but
he was no longer in a position to derive much satisfaction from it;
Italy was too obviously the Allies’ next target after North \frica.

After his long neglect of the Mediterranean Hitler began to pour
troops and supphes into T unisia in order at all costs to hold a bridgehead
covering Tunis and Bizerta. Even a part of these forces, had they been
made available earlier, would have been suiEcient to capture Eg}pt and
Suez: now they were to be thrown away in vain. In something of a panic
Mussolini urged Hitler to come to terms v, ;th Russia, or at least horten
his hues on the Eastern Front, so that the greatest number of divisions
could be moved to the Mediterranean and the west. These suggestions,
which Ciano repeated to the Fuehrer during a meetmj at Rnstenburg
m December were ignored. Hitler refused to yield a foot of ground
anywhere: he was determined to hold Tunisia and so deny live Allies
the free use of the Mediterranean, but he was equally determined not
to give up anything elsewhere. The results of such a strategy were neither
difficult to see nor long in comiug.

Meanwhile the Russians methodically tightened the net lound tlie
German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. The formula whicii had prosed suc-
cessful the previous winter was monotonously repeated: Stand and light
to the last man. Manstein’s efforts to open a corridor fiom the outside
were thrown back, but Hitler refused to let von Paulus attempt to break
the ring from the inside. No conceivable military purpose was served
by holding the German troops in their positions, but Hitic-’b personal
prestige as a leader was now engaged, and in compari;. ui w idi that the
lives of the three hundred and thirty thousand men of the 6th Ai my
were nothing.

Towards the end of January, 1943, Paulus reported that the suffering
of the troops, through cold, hunger and epidemics, was no longer
bearable, and that to continue fighting in such conditions was beyond
human strength. Hitler was unmoved. For an.sv-er he sent Paulus the
message:

Capitulation is impossible. The 6th Army will cio its histone duty at

Stalingrad until the last man, in ordei to make possible the leomstriiCionot

the Eastern Front. ^

Hitler did not hesitate to stoop to bribes: at the last moment he
promoted Paulus to the rank of Field-Marshal in order to buy tlic
loyalty of the commander whose troops he had deliberately condemned
to death. To the Italian Ambassador he compared the German Army at
Stalingrad with the Three Hundred at Thermopylae. They would show
’ Von Piulus’s evidence at Nuremberg, N.P., part VI, page 262.

631

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

the world, he declared, the true spirit of National Socialist Germany
and its loyally to its Fuehrer.

The outcome was a far worse blow to Hitler’s prestige than any order
to withdraw could ever have been. On the night of 31 January, the
Russians anoounced that they had completed the capture or annihila-
tion of the remainder of the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army, adding
that among the officers who had surrendered was Field-Marshal von
Paulus himself, his Chief of Staff, General Schmidt, and the Commander
of the II Army Corps, General von Seydlitz.

At noon on 1 February, the day after the Russian communique
Hitler held his usual military conference, the minutes of which have
been recovered since the war. Totally oblivious of his own responsibility
for whai had happened, the Fuehrer spared no thought for the men he
had driven to death or captivity He could think only of the commanders
who had capitulated: such ingratitude and disloyalty, he declared,
were beyond his comprehension.

The man should have shot himself just as the old commanders who threv/
themselves on then swords when they saw their cause was lost. That goes
without saying. Even Varus gave his slave the ordei : “Now loll me!’" . . ,
You have to imagine, he’ll be brought to Moscow. There he will sign
anything. He’ii make confessions, make proclamations. You’ll see: they will
now walk down the slope of spiritual bankruptcy to its lowest depths, , . .The
individual must die anyway. Beyond the life of the individual is the Nation.
But how anyone could be afraid of this moment of death, with v/liich he can
free iumseif from this miseiy, if his duty doesn’t chain him to this Vale of
Tears. No !

What hurts me most, personally, is that I promoted him to Field-Marshal.
I wanted to give him this final satisfaction. That’s the last Field-Marshal I
shall appoint in this war. You mustn’t count your chickens before they are
hatched. I don’t understand that at all. So many people have to die, and then
a man like that besmirches the heioism of so many otheis at the last minute.
He could have freed hiiuself from ail sorrow and ascended into eternity and
national immortality, but he prefers to go to Moscow. What kind of choice
IS that? It just doesn’t make sense.^

It was the comment of a supreme egotist, the complaint of a man who
was to see in the sufferings and defeat of a nation only his own betrayal
by a people unworthy of their Fuehrer.

^ Felix Gilbert (ed.)* Hitler Directs His Wm (New York, 1950), pages 17-22 This
IS a volume of the records of Hitler’s military conferences discovered rt the end of
the wai and put together Vvith the help of the stenographer.

632

THE UKACHIEVED IMEfEE

The battle of Stalingrad marked the peak of the German attempt to
subdue R.i;s..ia, and with the summer of 1943 the Soviet counter-
offensive, launched on a massive scale, put an end to Gciman hopes of
doing anything more than defend their positions on the Eastern Front.
The empire in the east was to remain unachieved.

Amongst the reasons for the German failure one is of particular
interest: Hitler’s neglect of the political possibilities of VvcaUcung
Russian resistance. At an eaiher stage — for instance, in preparing to
attack France — Hitler had shovvn a briiiiant undersui riding of hov. war
could be waged with other than mi!. .ary w'eapons. But, although he
repeatedly described the war with Russia as an ideologic.il coisilicl
and counted on the overthrow of the Soviet Government by the Russian
people, the harsh policy he adopted m the east worked in the opposite
direction.

There is evidence to show that when the Gciinan armies entered the
Ukraine and the Baltic States they were looked upon as liberalors.
The treatment the local population received from the civil ad.ninis-
tration and the S.S. who moved in behind the armies rupi.'ly des;io>ed
these illusions. Ignoring all that might have been done to drive a wedge
between the people and the Soviet Government, e.sr^^i ilv in the
Ukraine, Flitler preferred to treat the inhabitants of Eastern Europe
indiscriminately as Slav Unicnnenseben, fit only for sltive k,boL.i. The
proposals put forward by Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Eastern Terri-
tories, to win support by the abolition of the collective farms, the
establishment of religious freedom, and the giant of a measure tif sell-
government under local Quisling regimes had no interest for Hitlei.
The spirit of German policy was better expressed by Erich Ki>eh, the
Gauleiter of East Prussia whom Hitler appointed R.ic!! C uiiniissioiier
for the Ukraine. Speaking to a German audic-icc at Kiev on 5 March,
1943, Koch proclaimed: “We did not come here to serve out luann,..
We have come here to create the basis for victory. We arc a mader race,
w'hich must remember that the lowliest German worker is raci dly and
biologically a thousand times more valuable tfum the populiilioii here.”-*

The protests of Rosenberg’s Ministry against this brut:i! and sliort-
siglited attitude were unavailing. The men who shaped C.unan policy
in the east were not tlie ineffectual Rosenberg and his ohicials, but

1 N.D. 1,130-PS.

6.33

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Koch; Himmler and the S S.; Sauckel, whose job was to import slave
labour iiilo Germany, and Bormann, who used his influence with Hitler
to support Koch and discredit Rosenberg.

Goebbels was quick-witted enough to see the opportunities that were
being lost. In September, 1941, he dictated a lengthy memorandum on
political plans for handhng the Russian peoples, and the next year tried
to get Hitler to issue a proclamation promising the Russians greater
freedom and some relief from the oppressive exactions of the Soviet
Government. But Goebbels had no more success than the officials in
Rosenberg’s Ministry. Hitler, whose political interests had waned as he
became absorbed in his new role of military genius, was set upon clear-
cut victory in the field and remained indiJflerent to the possibility of
winning support in the east. In the summer of 1943 Goebbels was driven
to complain in his Diary :

We are doing too much on the military and too little on the political side of
the war. At this moment, when our military successes are none too great, it
would be a good thing if we knew how to make belter use of the political
instrument. We were so great and resourceful m that way at the time of oiu
struggle for power; why shouldn’t we achieve mastery in this art now?^

Goebbels put his finger on a fundamental weakness, but liis analysis
did not go far enough. For the neglect of political possibilities was due
to something more than the demands of the war. Hitler’s policy in
Eastern Europe was no hasty improvisation: it was the calculated
expression of a mind which could conceive of politics only in terms of
domination and could understand the exercise of power solely in terms
of the whip.

The proof of this is to be found in the records of a number of dis-
ci ssions between the Nazi leaders which go back at least to 1940, and
in which Hitler explained his plans for the future not only of Russia but
of the two other Slav countries of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

One such discussion took place on 2 October, 1940, after a dinner in
Hitler’s apartments at the Reich Chancellery. Hans Frank, the
Governor-General of Poland; Koch, then Gauleiter of East Prussia;
Baldur von Schirach, the Gauleiter of Vienna, and Martin Bormann
were the Fuehrer’s guests, and the conversation turned to the future of
the Polish Government-General.

Hitler’s ideas were perfectly clear.

The Poles [he declared] m direct contrast to our German workmen, are
especially born for hard labour We must give every possibility of advance-
^ Goebbels Dianes (28 July, 1943), page 333.

634

THE UNACHIEVED EMPIRE

mmt to our German workers; as to the Poles, there can be no qiicstioo of
improvement for them. On the contraiy, it is necessary to keep the standard
of life low in Poland, and it must not be permitted to rise* . . . Tiic Govern-
ment-General should be used byusmerelyas asourceof unskilled labour. * . .
Every year the labourers needed by the Reich can be piocured from the
Government-General. It is indispensable to bear in mmd that tb*.’ Polidi
landlords must cease to exist, however ciuel this may sound, they b:
exterminated wherever they are. . . .

There should be one master only for the Poles— the Gcimans. Two
masters, side by side, cannot and must not exist. Theieforc all i cpi escnuitives
of the Polish intelligentsia are to be exterminated. This, too, sounds cruel,
but such is the law of life.

The Poles will also benefit from this, as wc look after their health and sec
to it that they do not starve, but they must never be raised to a hirJicr level,
for then they will become anarchists and Communists. It will therefore be
proper for the Poles to remain Roman Cathol.es: Polish pi iests will i cccive
food from us and will, for that very reason, direct their little she p ah ng the
path we favour. ... If any priest acts diflcrently, we shall make . hoi t work
of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid and dull-
witted. This is entirely in our interests. Should the Poles rise to a Iiigfier
level of development, they will cease to be that manpower of winch aic ni
need. . . . The lowest German workman and the lowest German peasant must
always stand economically ten per cent above any Pole.^

About the same time Hitler was presented with a number of plans for
the future of the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia After deliberation
he accepted one which provided for the settlement of an increased
number of Germans in the Protectorate where they would assimilate that
part of the Czech population which was of racial value.

The other half of the Czechs must be deprived of their power, eliminated
and shipped out of the country by all soi ts of methods. This applies particu-
larly to the racially Mongoloid part and to the maj u part of the intehcctiial
class. The latter can scarcely be converted ideologically and wstukl Kxuiiv-
a burden by constantly making claims for the \:i\dci4rp over the other
Czech classes, and thus mtcrfeimg v/ith a rapid assinniation. Eiciirrifs
which counteract the planned Germanization ought lobe handled loiedi!)
and eliminated.^

These were the precedents for Hitler’s policy in Russia, imd they were
taithfully followed. On 16 July, 1941, a month after the invasion of tlie
Soviet Union, Hitler held a confeiencc at liis Fuelircr Htadi|i!uuers
which was attended by Goering, Rosenberg, Bormann, Keiiei and

^ Boimamfs notes, quoted m N.P., part VI, iV'es 219-? I .

•^Report on Hitlers wwvs by Karl Herman i rank, State Secrctaiy ioi tlic

Protectorate, at a confeientc on h Octol ei 1W0 H.H fhe-TO

b35

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Laminers, the head of the Reich Chancery. Rosenberg’s attempts to
plead for a friendly policy towards the Ukrainian people had no effect;
the note which Hitler struck was m a wholly difterent key. Under cover
of military occupation of the areas seized, plans for a permanent settle-
ment were to be introduced, “Nobody,” he warned his audience,
“must be able to recognize that it initiates a final settlement, but this
need not prevent our taking all necessary measures — shooting, re-
settling, etc.— and we shall take them.”

Bormann’s notes of Hitler’s remarks continue:

On principle we have now to face the tvdc of cutting up the giant cake
according to om* needs, in order to be able:

First, to dominate li;

Second, to administer it, and

Third, to exploit it.

The Russians have now ordered partisan warfare behind our lines. This
partisan wai again has some advantage for us: it enables us to eradicate
everyone who opposes us.

Principles

Never again must it be possible to create a military power west of the
Uials, even if \vc have to wage war fui a hundred ycais in order to attain
this goal. Evci y successor of the Fuehrer should know : secur Uy for the Reich
exists only if tlicie arc no foreign military foices west of the Uials. It is
Geimaiiy which undei takes the protection of this area against all possible
dangers. Our iron principle is and has to remain: We must never permit
anybody but the Gumcun to caity arms.

This IS especially important. Even when it seems easier at first to enlist
the armed support of subjugated nations, it is wrong to do so. In the end this
Will prove to be to our disadvantage Only the German may carry arms, not
the Slav, not the Czech, not the Ccscack nor the Ukrainian. On no account
should we apply a waveiing policy such as w^as done in Alsace before 1918.^

The first need was to exploit the occupied eastern territories for the
strengthening and relief of the German war economy. This had been
ioreseen in the economic directives drawn up before the invasion,^ and
was continually reafririiied by Goeimg and others. In a conference on
6 August, 1942, Goermg, as Plenipotentiary for the Four-Year Plan,
told the commissioneis for the occupied regions: “It used to be called
plundering. But today things have become more genteel. In spite of that,
I intend to plunder and to do it thoroughly.”^

As the bombing of German mdustiy and the losses of manpower and
equipment began to exert a greater strain on the German economy, so
the demands on the eastern tenitoncs mounted. These demands were
1 N D. L-221. Cf. above, pages ^ N.P., part JX, pages 322-4.

636

THE UNACHIEVED EMPIRE

not limited to raw matenals, food and macliinery, but extended to man-
power as well Russia, like Poland and the other occupied countries in
the west, France, Belgium and Holland, was turned into a vast labour
camp to provide the human material which German industry and
agriculture needed. The organization of this new slave traffic vias m
the hands of Sauckel, and the brutahty of the methods by which men,
women and children were rounded up, shipped to Germany and forced
to work, often under unspeakable conditions, beggars dcsi-ription.
By the end of 1944, 4,795,000 foreign workers had been recruited for
work in Germany, of whom 1,900,000 were Russians, 851,000 Poles,
764,000 French, 274,000 Dutch, 230,000 Yugoslavs and 227,0(X)
Italians.^ Sauckel himself admitted (at a Central Planning Board
meeting on 1 March, 1944) that “out of five million foreign workers
who have arrived in Germany, not even two Iiundred thousand came
voluntarily.”^ Regular man-hunts were organized, men and women
seized from their homes or on the streets, flung into cattle trucks and
transported hundreds of miles. On the ’way many died of privations.
The most fortunate were those who were detailed for work on farms.
Those who were sent to the heavily bombed industrial ccntics sailercd
cruelly: they were commonly housed in camps without the most
primitive facilities, exposed to epidemics, underfed and frequently
beaten.®

The figure of five million workers did not satisfy Hitler. He constantly
increased his demands on Sauckel, who in turn urged the local
authorities to apply the most ruthless measures to secure more man-
power. Particularly active in tliis work were tlie Governor-Gericral of
Poland, Hans Frank, and the Reich Commissioner for the ITraiue,
Kech, who boasted of their successes in rounding up huiureds of thou-
sands of men, women and children to be sent as slaves to Geiniany.

Hitler’s policy in the eastern occupied territories, however, was onlv
in part determined by Germany’s imiaeJiatc economic iicclIs. \s he
explained in the conference of 16 July, 1941, under cover o! liie occupa-
tion he was determined to lay the basis of a final settlement in the lands
between the Vistula and the Urals. Colonics ul setiiei-i iium Geiinaiiy
and from the German minorities in other countries (ri>/A',/cMi,u7ic)
were to be established in Poland and European Russia, cad. settlement

1 N D 2,5:0-PS, usin;i Ceiman ofilcii! figures.

“NP , paitll, page Sja. . .

^ Cf , for instance, the report of !)i Wil.ielm j.v.iei, who was respo
medical supervision of the foreign viuiker. at kiupps, N D. D-2flS;

.le lor liio
N P., past It,

pages 319-23.

6.37

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

being linked by a network of military roads and protected by S.S.
garrisons set up at key points, whose task was not only to guarantee the
new frontiers after the war but to keep the native population in per-
manent subjection. Part of this native population was to provide slave
labour for the industries and agriculture of the new German Empire,
and was to remain in a status of total inferiority, without rights and
without education, treated literally as a sub-human race at the arbitrary
disposal of their overlords. The surplus — including all those of educa-
tion, property and position who might provide a nucleus of leadership—
was to be exterminated to make room for the new colonists, or left to
die of starvation. The task of carrying out this nightmarish programme
was the special privilege of Himmler and the S.S.

Hitler had appointed Himmler as Trustee for the Consolidation of,
German Nationhood on 7 October, 1939. His tasks were defined as the
elimination of such alien groups as represented a danger to the Reich
and the German Folk Community, and the formation of new German
settlements from returning German citizens and racial Germans
abroad.’- To carry out these duties Himmler set up special departments
of the S.S. and outlined his programme in a number of speeches to his
S.S. commanders which give an authoritative picture of Hitler’s plans
for the future.”

The most interesting erf these speeches of which we have a record is
one which Himmler made to his S.S. Obergruppenfuehrer at Posen
on 4 October, 1943. He began by insisting on the need for ruth-
lessness.

One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S.S. men: v/e must be
honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and
nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not mteiest me
in the slightest. What the nations can offer m the way of good blood of our
type we will take, if necessary, by kidnapping their ciuldren and raismg
them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death
interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur, other-
wise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall
down fiom exhaustion while digging an anu-tank ditch interests me only
only m so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never
be lough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Gentians,
who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards
animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals.

‘ Hitler’s secret Decree of 7 October, 1939, N D. 686-PS.

The quotations from Himmler’s speeches and from the documents which follow
have been given at greater length than usual. The subject is one which lends itself so
easily to sensationalism that it appeared best to quote the authentic records and not
to attempt to paraphrase.

638

THE UNACHIEVED IMPiRE

But It IS a crime against our ovm blood to worry about them and gi\e them
ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsoxis to have a more dhlicuil time
with them, men somebody comes to me and says: “I cannot cug the anb-
tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kiii them;’
then I have to say: “You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the
anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons o!
German mothers. They are our o^vn blood. . . Our concern, oui dui} !
our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to every else. I
wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude to the problem of all non-

Germanic peoples, especially Russ,ans.

In passing Himmler mentioned the extermination of the Jews:

Most of you know what it means when a bundled coipses aic lying siae
by side, or five hundred or one thousand. To have stuck it out, and at the
same time — apart from exceptions caused by human weakness— to have
remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of
glory in our history which has never been written and is never to
written. . . Wchaa the moiai light, we had the duty to our people to dcMroy
this people [the Jews] which wanted to destioy n^,

Towards the end of his speech Himmler turned to the future:

If the peace is a final one, we shall be able to tackle oui v^crit work of the
future. We shall colonize. We shall indoctrinate our Ivys with the hws of

the S.S It must be a matter of course that the most copious breeding

should be from this racial elite of the Germanic people. In twenty to thirty
years we must really be able to present the whole of Europe w Uh its leadimt
class. If the S.S., together with the farmers, th.:n run the colony in tiic east
on a grand scale without any restraint, without any question uhoiit tradition
but With nerve and revolutionary impetus, we shall In twent}' ycais push
the frontiers of our Folk Community five hundred kilometres east-
wards. . . J-

A few months earlier, in April, 1943, Himmler was at Kharkov, and
there he spoke to Ins S.S. officers in the same strain, "We know ” he
declared, ‘That these clashes with Asia and Jewry are necessary for

evolution They are the necessary condition for our race and for our

blood to create for itself and put under cultivation in the years peace
(during which we must live and work austerely, frugally and tike
Spartans) that settlement area in which new blood cun breed as m a

botanical garden We have only one task, to stand firm and carry on

the racial struggle without mercy We will never let that excellent

weapon, the dread and terrible reputation which preceded us in the
battles for Kharkov, fade, but will constantly add new meaning to it.

i N.D. 1,9I9.PS.

639

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

They can c^ll us v/liat they like m the v/orld; the mam thing is that we
are the eternally loyal, obedient, steadfast and unconquerable fighting
men of the Germanic people and of the Fuehrer, the S.S. of the Ger-
manic Reich.’*^

This vision of the S.S Empire of the future remained unrealized, but
the preliminary work of preparation was put in hand from the be-
ginning of the war, and certain characteristic institutions of the S.S.
State were well estabhshed— the V/cffen (Armed) S'.S’., the Concentra-
tion Camps, and the Einsatzkommandos (Extermination Squads). By
1944, the extcimmation of the Jews, the first item on the programme,
was well on the way to being accomplished.

The Waffen S.S. divisions numbered only three at the beginning of the
war, but by the end this figure had risen to thirty-five, over half a
million men. They were designed as an alternative military force to the
Army and one upon which Hitler could rely imphcitly. The Waffen S.S.
was also to have important functions after the war. These were set out by
Hitler on 6 August, 1940, when the S.S. division Leibstandarte Adolf
Hitler v/as set up. His remarks were later circulated to Army officers as
an authoritative view of the future of the S.S.

The Greater German Reich [Hitlei pointed out] m its final form will include
within Its frontiers national entities who aie, from the beginning, not well
disposed towards the Reich. It is therefore necessary to maintain, outside
the German core of the Reich, a State military police capable of representmg
and imposing the authoiity of the Reich w.thin the country m any situation.

This task can be earned out only by a State Police which has within its
lanks men of tli3 best German blood and which identifies itself unreservedly
With the ideology at the base of the gi eater German Reich. Only a formation
composed in this way will lesisl disintegrating influences even in critical
times. Such a iormatioii— pioud of its lacnl purity — ^will never fraternize
With the proletariat and with the unJcnvorld wmcli undermines the funda-
mental idea. . . . Returning home a.Ber having proved themselves in the
field, the units of the Waffen S.S, wdl possess the authority to execute their
tasks as State Police.^

An interesting feature of the Waffen S.S. was the high percentage of
racial Germans from outside the Reich, and even of foreigners, taken
into it. Of the mne hundred thousand (including all losses) who passed
through the IVaJjen S.S., less than half were Reich Germans/ The

^N.D l,9i9-PS. D-665

® Tlie figures given ai the Nuiemberg Trial for the end of i94^l w'ere* 410,000 Reicii
Germans; 300,000 Racial Geimans (Voiksdeutsche), 50,000 from other Germanic
races; 150,000 foreigners,

640

THE Utl\('HlLVED fcMPIRI

Aryan was a type Hitler and Himinier luved to ili j 1 1 odicr na'ion.
than the German and to recruit for an ihtc v\hith was In be lutcUi.U'una!

m character.”^

Among the particular duties cf the S.S that .’ni/in ' the
concentration camps. At the ouibrcak of nar \utc s! . ^llch cm r*
in Germany, with a pruoncr population of 2K‘K]0. Accunl^ ’ - ) the S S,
official records, by 1942 this had nsen io 44,700 in tiic t/iginal c -
while nine additional camps had been cjnstructed. lk‘aw\Tj !' 37
1945, 238,980 prisoners were sent Io one of lhc'.a cemp i alone, Bn;? tr.-
wald, near Weimar, where 33,^02 am rec(T.ied ]:n\i^vt dL‘d. la a
circular letter of 28 December, 1942, m cdlicial of . u ^ \!a \ (V ‘
complained that out of 136,870 new arrivals in cm a* canr^^

between June and November 70,610 were .-head) dc ' ! Tv.x he p- iiiled
out, seriously reduced the numbers asailable lor armaments work n
l6e concentration camp factories.

Before the war, the concentration camps liad bean used for the
“preventive detention” of opponents of ihe regime n i iei many D”
the war great numbers of Jews and of »nemhas of the Rcsisbtno'
movements from the occu'ued countries s'vcrc aaimporled to them
Then m 1942, Himmler, with Jhtler’s agrcomcni, bcg;in list* the
concentration camps as a source of !abv)i:r for armjiiietu; work, and
the S.S. established its own factories. By agrecmcr.t helw.c'i HimmJer
and the Reich Minister of Justice, llurraek, certain ta^'gorits of
prisoners were agreed upon suitable 'ho he w irked to deaihA
Among other uses to winch concentration-camp pris nieis were pul was
to serve as the raw mateiial for medical expcnmcius h) S S. JisPtors.
Experiments conducted at Dachau, near Mu’mc’u mcliidiJ mu'sHgation
of the effects of intense air-pressurc and inleio.e c A In man htingi;
injections with new drugs; castration, artsfinal inscrmiatiori and
abortion. According to a Czech doctor who was a ‘'‘woncr at Dachau
and who personally performed some seven thousand aiitonsies, ::ie usual
results of such experiments W'crc death, permnneut crippling and mental
derangement.^

The work of guarding the concentratiiin camps and carr^ r ^ out the
brutal sentences of flogging, torture am’ execution winch v\ere cver}da>
occurrences was alloted io the S.S. Dmit* \ Head Units i'i'oiLnkvpji.t-
bande). In a speech which he delivered to S.S. lead ns al MjU Xpnl
1941, Himmler described such work as the ^ub-liiimanily

{Ufiierntenschentufft). This will noi be a bonag guard dub'* hU, it the

^ Cf above, pa:a.*s 36^" 1. "N.D. !,171“FS. N J). 664-FS.

^ Deposition of Dr. Franz BUilia; N.D. 3,2‘tS-PS.

641

L H —W

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

officers handle it right, it will be the best indoctrination on inferior
beings and the sub-human races/’^

More terrible even than the concentration camps were the exter-
mination camps. According to the official German figures, at Maut-
hausen in Austria (a network of twenty-three to thirty camps), close on
Ivv^o million people, mainly Jews, were exterminated between 1941 and
1945.

Lest these figures should appear incredible, it is worth while adding an
extract from the affidavit of Rudolf Hoess, the Commandant of the
Auschwitz Camp in Poland. According to his own testimony, Hocss,
who was born in 1900, had been a member of the Party since 1922 and
of the S,S. Totcnkopfverband since 1934. For eleven years he served in
concentration camps, and from May, 1940, to December, 1943, at
Auschwitz. In his affidavit he says:

I estimate that at least two and a half million victims were executed and
exterminated at Auschwitz by gassing and burning and that at least another
half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about
three million dead. This figure represents about seventy to eighty per cent
of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been
selected and used for slave labour m the concentiation-camp industries, . . .
The total number of victims included about a hundred thousand German
Jews, and great numbers of citizens, mostly Jewish, from Holland, France,
Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece or other countries.
We executed about four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews alone at
Auschwitz in the summer of 1944. . . .

The “final solution” of the Jewish question meant the complete extermin-
ation of all Jews in Em ope. I was ordered to establish extermination
facilities at Auschwitz m June, 1941. At that time there were already three
othei extermination camps in the Government-General : Belzek, Trebiinka
and Wolzek. I visited Trebiinka to find out how they carried out their
extermination. The Camp Commandant told me that he had liquidated
eighty thousand in the course of one half year. He was principally concerned
with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. He used monoxide
gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient. So at Auschwitz
I used Cyclon B, which was a crystallized prussic acid dropped into the death
chamber. It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the people m the
chamber, according to climatic conditions. We knew when the people were
dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about half an
hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies
were removed, our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the
gold from the teeth of the corpses. Amother improvement that we made over

iRD. l,9i8-PS.

642

THE UInACHIEVED EMlHRf

Trebimka was that we built our gas-churn beis to accnoiiii H‘ two thou*

sand people at one time. . . J-

When the invasion of Russia begun Hitler and Ilinihilei recruifeu
four special units known as Einsatzkommandos to carr} out the ex-
termination of the Jewish population and also of Communist func-
tionaries. Otto Ohlendorf, the Chief of the Security Police (SD), who
commanded Emsatzgruppe D in southern Russia for a >ear, estimated
that ninety thousand men, women and children were liquidated b> his
formation during that period. At first the victims v cre made to dig
mass trenches into which they were thrown after cxecidiou by shooting:
the scenes described of terniied children and distracted mothers are
without pity. In the spring of 1942, however, the efficient Mam Office in
Berlin began to supply gas vans for mobile extermination. Another
formation, Emsatzgruppe A, in noithern Russia, killed a hundred and
thirty-five thousand Jews and Communists m its first four months of
operations.^

In August, 1944, Eichmann, one of Himmler's assistants, reported to
him that approximately four million Jews had been killed in the various
extermination camps, while an additional tvx) millions had met death
m other ways, the major part shot by the Einsatzkommandos ot‘ the
Security Police in Russia Himmler was not satisfied with this report,
he was sure that more than six million Jews had been killed, and he
proposed to send an S.S. statistician to overhaul Eichmaniiks records.

It has been widely denied in Germany since the war that any but a
handful of Germans at the head of the S.S. knew of the scope or savagery
of these measures against the Jews. One man certainly knew. For one
man they were the logical realization of views which he had held since
his twenties, the necessary preliminary to the plans he hud formed for
the resettlement of Europe on solid racial foundations. Thai man was
Adolf Hitler.

Himmler organized the extermination of the Jews, but the man in
whose mind so grotesque a plan had been conceived was Hiller.
Without Hitler’s authority, Himmler, a man solely of subordinate
virtues, would never have dared to act on his own. This was the subject
of those secret talks ‘'unter vier Avgen" between the Fuehrer and the
Reichsfuehrer S.S, at which no one else (save occasionally Bormann)
was allowed to be present and of wffiich no records survive. There are
few more ghastly pages in history than this attempt to eliminate a whole
race, the consequence of the ‘‘discovery” made by a young down-and-

1 N.D. 3,868-PS ^ Otto Ohlendorfs Afiidaui; N D. 2,620-PS.

“^Affidavit of aSS Sturmbannfihhret vvilhelm HoettI, N.D. 2J38-PS.

643

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

out m a Vienna slum in the 1900s that the Jews were the authors of
everything that he most hated in the world.

At a meeting of the entire Party leadership at Berlin in May, 1943,
Goebbels records, Hitler declared that “the anti-Semitism which for-
merly animated the Party must again become the focal point of our
spiritual struggle.’

At the same time he added: “All the rubbish of small States still
existing in Euiope must be liquidated as fast as possible. The aim of our
struggle must be to create a unified Europe: the Germans alone can
really organize Europe.”^

Here is the true picture of that European New Order of which Hitler
had spoken to Hermann Rauschning as long ago as 1932-1933, with
the extermination of the Jews as the first step m the establishment of
the imperial rule of the Herrenvolk over the whole Continent. With such
plans in mind, it was entirely logical on Hitler’s part to treat talk of
European co-operation as a fit theme for propaganda, but nothing more.
Such an empire could be won and maintained by force alone: there was
no room for co-operation.

It IS all too easy to dismiss such a conception as the fantasy of a
diseased brain : it is well to remember, however, that in the sinister sites
of Auschwitz and Mauthausen, and the well-kept records of the S.S.,
there are the proofs of how near the fantastic came to being realized.

644

^ Goebbels Diai les, page 279.

CHAFliAl ninUH

TWO JULYS

19434944

The immediate consequences oe the Sialin^.-aif disaster wcie
not so great as mighi have been eKpccteu, and did not lead to a cidLipse
of the German front m the east. The Russian att.s a; to cut ^ iTthc ai niv
in the Caucasus was defeated by a skiifud> conuujlcd i ‘
it IS true, was relie\ed, but Lenn-^grad rcu. aned unJer (s iiEjun siielidirc.
The Russians drove the Germans out of the Done./ il ji anJ K!iarko\
during February, but a German counter-olkn^ive in * lueh reeg^tsued
them, and when the winter fighting came to an end U\2 i :iniAn oac,
although withdiawn in the centre and the south, was slil! dLCp in Russian
territory. It was not until the iate summer oi 1943 iiuU the Russians
renewed their attacks. By that time Hitler was k ced wuh an even gra\cr
situation in Italy.

Hiller’s rapid decision to seize TunRiii in November, 1942, prosed
effective in balking the x\llies oi victor) before luc end Uail }cai.
He was even hopeful of holding funisia mJchnnvi), and so banuig llic
use of the Mediterranean sea-rouie to BrilUtiL The news fiom luiI),
however, made him anxious: the Duce wa^ ’ll, uishhe of llie laoiiuiis
was Widespread, and the one ambition <Tt!ie ilaliaii people wa> to k.
out of the w^ar as soon as possible Changes m ttie Italian High Com-
mand and Government at the bcginniiig (T increased (ieaiiaii
suspicions, and when Ciano left the Foreign Mum >iry to become Ambas-
sador to the Vatican, the Germans were sure that he had tone ilicre to
negotiate a separate peace.

Something must clearly be done to stiffen hiS faihng ad), and at the
end of February, 1943, Hitler sent Ribhentiop on a \:sil to Rome
With a long personal letter to the Duce. Hillci not meniion Sialuw
grad, and his references to the EaMcrii Fronk whicn were rciegalcu
to the end of the letter, betrayed considerable cnihan:ibsmcnt. Bui he
insisted that the war m the cast must go on until the Russian giant

645

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

was destroyed: until that was accomplished Europe would never know
peace.

I know as well as you, Duce, how difficult it is to take historic decisions, but
I am not certain that after my death another will be found with the necessary
force of will, ... I consider that it is by the grace of Providence that I have
been chosen to lead my people in such a war.^

The rest of the letter was taken up with an encouraging survey of the
war situation, m which Hitler laid particular stress on the success of
the U-boats.

Ribbentrop’s visit was followed by Hitler’s agreement to allow the
Italian workmen in Germany to return home — a considerable con-
cession at a time when Sauckel was mobilizing the labour resources of
the rest of Europe to work for Germany. But neither encouragement,
repeated in further letters from the Fuehrer, nor concessions had any
effect. Mussolini, ageing, sick and disillusioned, was fast losing control
of the situation. Mass strikes in Turin and Milan, with the slogans
“Peace and Liberty,” were a pointer to the impending collapse of the
regime. A few days later the Allies began their final drive to clear
Tunisia. All that Mussolini could think of was a renewed appeal to
Hitler to make a separate peace with Russia. Hitler’s reply was to press
Mussolini to come to Salzburg, where they met m the middle of April.

Mussolini promised his lieutenants that this time he would stand up
to Hitler: he was determined to urge peace with Russia, and the with-
drawal of the German armies from abroad to defend their homeland
But, face to face with the dynamic Fuehrer, he succumbed and sat silent
while Hitler talked.

By putting every ounce of nervous energy into the effort, Hitler told
Goebbeis, he succeeded m pushmg Mussolini back on the rails. In those
four days the Duce undeiwent a complete change. When he got out of the
tram on his airival the Fuehrer thought he looked like a broken old man;
when he left again he was in high fettle, ready for anyth mg.^

On this occasion Hitler overrated his powers as a faith-healer.
Mussolini returned to Rome leaving unsaid all he had meant to tell
the Fuehrei, but at heart already a defeated man, no longer able to
convince himself oi the part he bad to play. His despair was soon justi-
fied. On 7 May Tunis and Bizerta were captured by the Allies and within
a week the entire Axis forces m Africa, which Hitler, against Ronimel’s
advice, had built up to more than tv/o hundred and fifty thousand men,
were taken prisoner with all their equipment. In less than six months

^ Les Letttes Seaetes echangees par Hitler et Muisohm (Pans, 1946), pages 143-63.
^ Goebbeis Dianes, pages 274-5.

646

1 wo JOLYS

Stalingrad and Tunisia together had cost the Axis the los*? of \wdl over
half a million men.

It was obvious that the Allies would not be content to stay in Africa^
but would attempt a landing on the nortiicni shores of the Medilcr*
ranean — and equally obvious that, with the loss of the troops in I unisia.
Hitler and Mussolini would be hard pressed to prevent them. The first
problem was: where? In the summer of 1943 the choice was felt to
lie between Sicily and Saidinia, with Mussolini favouring the former
and Hitler the latter. The second was the tecimical problem of how
best to dispose the forces available. But the most difficult of all \wis the
third: whether the Italians could be relied on to hghi.

Co-operation between the Italian and German Armed Forces was
increasingly strained. Report after report Irom German officers in
Italy left Hitler in no doubt of the danger of the situation, but he icared
to take drastic action lest this should drive the Italian*, inio i pen revolt.

In this uneasy state of mind, foreseeing what might happen out unable
to prevent it, Hitler waited foi the allied attack. It came on 10 July,
in Sicily, and the Allies at once made good their landings.

Nine days later Hitler summoned Mussolini to meet him at Fcltre,
in northern Italy. It was their thirteenth meeting, and a repetition of
the April talks at Salzburg. In a last effort to put new life into the
alliance, Hitler talked for three hours on end before lunch. I here was
one course open to them, he declared, to fight and go on fighting, on
aU fronts— -in Russia as well as Italy— and with a fanatical will to con-
quer. In Germany, he boasted, boys of fifteen were now maiioing the
A.A. batteries.

If anyone tells me that our tasks can be left to another generation, 1 reply
that this IS not the case. No one can say that the future veneration w'jII be a
generation of giants. Germany took tfui ty years to 1 1 cover; Rome never rose
again. This is the voice of History.^

After lunch Hitler summoned up liis energies for a second perfor-
mance. Once again, as Ciano had so often noted, he talked, talked,
talked; and once again the Duce sat silent to the end. He even failed to
get a promise of reinforcements from the Germans.

Immediately after the Feltrc meeting Italian discoiitent with the
German alliance and W'itli the Duce as its lepreseiitative came to a head.
The Fascist Grand Council (which had not been summoned since
December, 1939) met on the night of 24-25 July, and Mussolini had
to listen to violent criticism of his conduct of the war. The following
^ Hitler e Mussolini, Italian rmnules of the discussions at pages 165-90

647

WAR-LOi^D, 1939-1945

evening the Duce was dismissed by the King and placed under arrest.
The veteran Marshal Badoglio foimed a non-Fascist government;
the Party itself was dissolved, and Fascist oiBficials expelled from their
posts. The basis of the new Government’s authority was the Crown and
the Army.

The nev/s of Mussolini’s fall, though it had long been foreseen by
Hitler, came as a profound shock to the Fuehrer’s Headquarters. Hitler
had never wavered in personal loyalty to Mussolini. In private he con-
stantly referred to him as the one man to be trusted in Italy, and m
public he repeatedly identified the Nazi and Fascist Revolutions as
the twin foundations of the New Order Now, at one blow, after more
than tv/enty years in power, the Roman Dictator had been deprived of
office, unceremoniously bundled into an ambulance and driven off
under arrest — without a shot being fired or a voice raised in protest.

The precedent was too obvious for even the least pohtical of Germans
to miss. The Fuehrer’s own prestige was directly involved, and the Nazis’
embarrassment was shown by the silence of the German Press after the
brief announcement that Mussolini had resigned on grounds of ill-
health. Hitler at once ordered Himmler to take severe measures to pre-
vent trouble in Germoiiy, but he declined to make any speech, despite
reports that the German people were anxiously expecting him to explain
what had happened. In fact, Hitler was not anxious about the reper-
cussions in Germany, his concern was with Italy, and how to prevent
the change of government in Rome leaomg to the loss of the peninsula.
If that could be accomplished not only would the military situation
be saved, but the events in Rome would have less effect on the other
satellite States, who were eagerly watching to see whether Italy would
succeed in getting out of the war.

As soon as the news reached his headquarters Hitler summoned an
iniincdiate conference of all the Nazi leaders, together with Rommel,
Doenitz and other military figures. The fad that a situation he feared
had at last materialized relie\ed rather than depressed Flitler. Despite
the strain, intensified by heavy fighting on the Eastern Front, he kept
his head, showing not only delcrnimalion and energy in dealing with
the crisis, but considerable skill as well. This combined with the slow-
ness of the Allies in taking advantage of the situation, enabled him to
make a brJhant recovery.

Hitler did not wait for his lieutenants to arrive before taking a number
of key decisions on the spur of the moment. The first and most impor-
tant was that the new Italian Government under Badoglio, however

648

TWO Jl LYS

Tiuch it might protest Us loyally to the Ams, was only pLuing for liin^
in order to make a deal with the Allies and must he !.v lied^aasjrJrigK.
The second was to move m c\ery man he coulu lind m order to seize
control and hold Italy when the time came.

In a conference with his generals between 9^0 anhi ’n on the
evening of 25 July, only a few hours after Mussohnf ^ d.irm-.tk Hitlci
brushed aside lodFs atgamenl that they ouglu to wail lor esact lepcn is.

Certainly, [he replied] but we hav^ to plan alidad. Ij doiiHieulv. tii Ooj’
treachery, they will proclaim that they w !l lemam !o\al but th ‘

treachery. Of course they won’t remam ij^af Aiiiiounfi that so-anu-sc^

Marshal Badoglio declared immediately ihot lb o.i wi'uld becoroiiucd,
that won’t make any diffeience. Thc> ha\c to say that. But . psi\ the
same game, while preparing everything to take over the whole aiea with
one stroke, and capture all that riff-rafl'd

Hitler’s first thought was to stage a second puisdi w'ith the Iielp of ihc
3rd Panzergrenadier Division stationed ojiside Rome, and lo eapUne
the new Government, the King and the Crown Ihmcc by loice ’Alien
Hewel, Ribbentrop’s man at F.H Q., askeci if ihc e\Us of Uie \ . ncaii
should be blocked, Hitler answered: 'U’li go rielu into Ihe V.Uicaii.
Do you think the Vatican embarrasses me? We’ll take that i)\er right
away. It’s all the same to me Thai rabble [the DspIonu:i:e C\>rpsj
is in there. We’ll get that bunch of swine out of there. Later, wc can
make apologies.”

Subsequently, under pressure from Ribbentrop and Gordibels,
Hitler agreed to spare the Vatican, but for some d:Po he still played
with the idea of an immediate coup.

By the time Goebbels and the rest arrived on Ific 26t!i, Hitler hwi
prepared four sets of plans, and the forces to can y them out wci c sleaddy
being collected. The first, knowm by the code word hkhe was

a plan for the rescue of Mussolini; the secamd, Snakni, provided for
the occupation of Rome and the resloiation of Ihc Fascist regime:
the third, Schwarz (“Black”), covered the military occupaliua uf Italy,
and the fourth, Achse (“Axis”), dealt v/ith measures for the Capture
or destruction of the Italian fleet.

Hitler attached great importance to securing Mussolini in person to
lead a restored Fascist government, and he used the occasion of the
ex-Duce’s sixtieth birthday on 29 July to demonstrate hi^ loyalty.
Laudatory notices were published in the German Press, together with

^ These and the following remarks by Hitici aie all lal.eii fiom the steiiiigrafdiei s
records printed m Felix Gilbert, pages 39-71.

L.H.—

649

WAR-LORO, 1939-1945

the news that the Fuehrer had sent the Duce a special edition of Nietz-
sche’s works in twenty-four volumes with a personal dedication. The
others were less sure. While Goering and Ribbentrop supported Hitler,
Goebbels, in his diary, described Hitler as “over-optimistic about the
Duce and the possibihties of a Fascist come-back.” Doenitz, Rommel
and Jodi thought the same and said so. “These are matters which a
soldier cannot comprehend,” was Hitler’s retort. “Only a man with
political insight can see clearly.”

The practical question was one of timing. Hitler, Goering and Goeb-
bels wanted to act at once; the King, Crown Prince and Badoglio’s
Government should be seized and brought to Germany, while Musso-
lini was restored to power in Rome. Rommel (whom Hitler had
appointed Commander-in-Chief in Italy) and the other soldiers wanted
to wait until the situation became clearer. They feared that precipitate
action would drive Badoglio, whom they hoped to keep on their
side, into the arms of the Allies; they were highly sceptical about the
authority of Mussolini or the popularity of a revived Fascist regime,
and they were impressed by the risks involved at a time when the
German forces in Italy were still weak.

No clear decision v/as taken either way: instead, Hitler continued to
defer final orders from day to day, much to his advantage. For Badoglio
was in a difficult position. Hitler was right in supposing that he would
at once begin negotiations for a separate peace, but until he could
reach agreement with the Allies he had to keep up the pretence of co-
operation with the Germans. Hitler, realizing the game that was being
played, made the most of the Allies’ long delay to strengthen his forces
in Italy before the show-down came. At the end of the six weeks which
the Alhes allowed to elapse between Mussolini’s fall (25 July) and the
publication of the armistice with the Badogho Government (8 Sep-
tember) Hitler was in a very much stronger position to put his plans into
effect.

The announcement of the Italian armistice again took Hitler by surprise.
He was away at Zaporozhe in the Ukraine, dealing with the situation on
the southern sector of the front, and arrived back at his headquarters
shortly before the news came in. The Italians kept up appearances to
the last moment and succeeded completely in deceiving the Germans.
There was only time to send the code-word for action to Kesselring,
650

1 wo Jl ! YS

who was in command in southern Italy; thercafler, Ci>mmii:iicaliuii
became difficult and information scarce At Hitler's rciiuc^t CiocbhcK
flew out to Rastenburg on a grey, wet autiinin moniinp. He fi^ur.d
Hitler in a bitter mood, full of indignation with the Itali.oo, iiol least
because they had tricked him. ‘'llic Duce wilt enter history the Iasi
Roman/’ Goebbels wrote, “but behind his massive figure a gypsy
people has gone to rot.”-^

Goebbels pleaded as persuasively as he could with the Fuehrer to
speak over the radio. Hitler had not spoken since the occasion M Hemes
Memorial Day in March, and on that occasion he read his speech so
badly and made so poor an appearance that it left the worst impression
on those who were present At the time of Mu‘'-solini\s fa!! he iiad de-
clined to say anything in public and it was only with difficulty that
Goebbels succeeded in overcoming his objections now
The speech contains little that is of interest. HilitT p^iid an inv
pressive tribute to Mussolini, “the greatest son of Itahan m)i! miicc
the collapse of the Roman Empire,” and laid stress on his o\^ n kwahy:
‘T have not learned to change my \iev's from time to time according
to circumstances, or merely to deny them.”

By contrast, the treachery of the Italians would be a matter of national
shame for generations to come. But its results would not aflcct the war:

The struggle in Italy has foi months been earned on maihly by Ijcrinan
forces. We shall now continue the struggle fiee of all lurdenHimc lacum
brances. . . . Tactical necessity may compel us once and again fo give up
something on some fiont in this gigantic fateful snuggle, but it wdl never
break the ring of steel that protects the Reich.

Lest there should be illusions abroad. Hitler added:

Hope of finding tiaitors here rests on complete igruirance of the characler
of the National Socialist State; a belief that they can bring ah jut a 25 July in
Gennany rests on a fundamental illusion as to my pei sonal position, as W'cli
as about the attitude of my political coilaboiatois and my fieid-iiiarshaK,
admirals and generals.^

The speech was broadcast on the evening of 10 September, and even
before it went out a special bulletin reported striking successes Ibi the
Germans in Italy. Hitler had raised the Germuii forces there to some
sixteen divisions, and these now proceeded to disarm the much more
numerous Itahan formations and to seize the key positions, iiiciuding
control of Rome, without meeting any serious resistance. The King and

^ Goebbels Diaries, page 349. ® Prange; page.s 381-6.

651

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Badoglio fled from the capital, and within a matter of hours the Germans
were masters of the greater part of the country.

Simultaneously with the announcement of the armistice, the Fifth
and Eighth Armies had landed on the Italian mainland and begun to
fight their way north. To Kesselring’s relief, however, the Allies landed
much farther south than he had dared to hope, not m the neighbour-
hood of Rome as he had feared, but at Salerno, to the south of Naples.
Hitler and his military advisers had already written off the south
of Italy, and the German defence plans were based on positions well
to the north of Rome, Kesselrmg was under orders to retreat to the
Apennines above Florence, and it was there that Rommel had estab-
lished his headquarters as Commander-m-Chief. But when Kessel-
ring succeeded in holding up the allied advance — even by the end of
the year they had advanced no more than seventy miles from Salerno —
Hitler agreed to recast his plans and allow KesseMng to fight on the
Winter Line drawn across the peninsula not far to the north of Naples.
This left more than two-thirds of Italy, including the industrial north,
m German hands, and it was not until June, 1944, that the Allies
succeeded in reaching Rome.

After his fall Mussolini was moved by the Badoglio Government from
one place to another until he was finally taken to a small hotel at the
Gran Sasso, high up in the Abruzzi Mountains. Hitler took a close
personal interest in Mussolini’s movements, and once he had been
located a spectacular rescue from the air was planned. On 12 September
this was carried out with success by an S.S. detachment under the com-
mand of Otto Skorzeny, and Mussolini was brought to the Fuehrer’s
Headquarters at Rastenburg.

The first meelmg between the two men was cordial, but a rapid dis-
enchantment followed. Hitler’s plan was to re-estabhsh the Fascist
regime in Italy. A small number of former Fascist leaders, Pavolim,
Farinacci and Mussolini’s son, Vittorio, had reached Germany and
were already at work. But these were minor figures: to be successful
the new Fascist Republic must have Mussohni at its head. The Duce,
however, had changed out of all recognition: he was a shrunken figure,
an ageing man without political ambition, whose real wish was to be
allowed to go home to the Romagna Under Hitler’s urging — and
scarcely veiled threats — he agreed to play the part for which he had
been cast, but it was without enthusiasm and, as it soon appeared,
only with the help of vigorous prompting from the producer.

Hitler’s disillusionment touched him deeply. When Goebbels visited

652

TWf) JLL^S

his headquarters towards the end of Sepicniber, Hiticr iiim lor j
walk and poured out Ins penl-up feelings.

The Duce [Goebbels rccoided in his diarv] has njt dra;n the i, Kidiwoiis
from Italy’s catastrophe which the Fuehrer expected. He » uaLu .Jh over-
joyed to see the Fuehrer and to be at liberty un. But the ^

that the first thing the Duce would do would lit to wicaL full vent' ^ e?: on
his betrayers. He gave no such indication, howexa, which ins ict'l

limitations. He is not a revolutionary hlc the I uemer itt S arn, ID s so
bound to his own Italian people that lie lacks ihc bj oa.l q rild ^cs of a w oi Id-
wide revolutionary and insunectionistd

This unwillingness to treat his enemies as Hitler !)ad treated Reehin
in 1934 was beyond the Fuehrer’s comprehension: he was parutiiliiiy
incensed that Mussolini refused to take action against fiu sniMii«ki\v,
Ciano, who had taken refuge m German v and w himi the hud lung
wanted to be shot.

There could be no question, however, of considering the Diicc\
personal feelings. He must do as he was told. On 1 5
lint’s restoration to the leadership of Fascism was poxiai len, and the
new Italian Social Republic came into being. Its '"Go^cniiiienr’ followed
a squalid and undistinguished career until the end t;f l!ic war ui Italy.
Even when Mussolini returned to Italy and settled at Gargnaiu^, on
Lake Garda, he remained the prisoner of the Germans, and liis villa
was surrounded by S.S. Guards, ostensibly as a bodygui'af. The new
regime possessed neither independence nor authoriiy: il was despised
by the Germans and hated by the Italians.

As for Mussolini himself, the last phase of his life was liic must
degrading of all He was reduced to the lank of a piippiu diCuitor who
even despised himself. In October Mussolim h id to surrender
Istria and the South Tyrol to Germany, and then* \\:o c\cri talk oi
incorporating Venetia in Greater Germany. In November he was
obliged to hand over Ciano to the Germans, and he shiil himself up
with his mistress, refusing to see his daughter EdJa. But Hitler exacted
the Ml humiliation. In January, 1944, Ciano was shot by a Fascist
firing squad acting under the nominal authoriiy of Ins Lilhcr-in-law
The fascination which Hitler had once exerted over Mjssoiini was
turned to hatred. The Duce made few appearances in public, and left
decisions largely to his ‘^Ministers,” who intrigued incessantly against
each other and against him. But he could nut escape from the destiny
he had forged for himself in making his pact with Hitler and, when the
end came, his body, side by side with that of his misticss, was hung up

^ Goibbeh Duuicx, page 37S.

(>53

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

on a gibbet in that same city of Milan in which he had proclaimed the
Axis on 1 November, 1936.

Hitler’s conviction that Fascism could be revived in Italy proved as
insubstantial as Hs belief in Mussolini as a brother Superman superior
to the blows of Fate. But the Italian Social Republic served his purpose;
it enabled appearances to be preserved, at least for a time. Taken with
the German success in occupying the greater part of Italy and holding
the Allies well south of Rome, the restoration of Mussolini could be
presented as a triumphant ending to the crisis which had threatened
in the summer to leave the southern frontiers of the Reich directly
exposed to allied attack.

Moreover, the Germans were successful not only in securing most
of Italy, but also in taking over the Italian zones of occupation in the
Balkans, in Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece, where Hitler had for some
time been apprehensive of a British landing. Considering the course of
events in the Mediterranean theatre since El Alamein and the landings
in North-west Africa fourteen months before. Hitler might well con-
gratulate himself at the end of 1943 on the effective way in which, by
energy, determination and luck, he had retrieved a disastrous situ-
ation.

Even so, what had happened in Italy could scarcely be considered
a victory, and the position in the south was very much weaker than
it had been at the end of 1942. Now the war was being fought on the
mainland of Europe, not in North Africa, and, however slow might
be the allied advance, all that Kesselring could do was to fight a skilful
rearguard action. If this was true of Italy, the prospect elsewhere was
still darker.

In the east, after throwing back the Russians in March, 1943, in July
the Germans launched a new offensive against their lines round Kursk,
carrying it out with unusually large tank forces. After heavy and costly
fighting the Russians not only succeeded in bringing the German attack
to a halt, but on 12 July themselves opened an offensive (for the first
time in the summer) farther north. Gradually their attacks spread along
the whole front. On 4 August they retook Orel, and on 23 August
Kharkov. On 23 September they recaptured Poltava, and on the 25th
Smolensk, from which both Napoleon and Hitler had directed their
invasions of Russia.

However hard the Germans fought, they were borne back by the
sheer weight of the attack. No sooner had one thrust been sealed-off
or thrown back than fighting would flare up on another sector. The
654

IWO JULYS

Donetz Basin was lost, the Crimea cut off. On 6 Novcniher the Russian-,
entered Kiev, and on the last day of 1943 recaptured Zhitoiinr I’or the
second time. The sole result of Hitler’s inflexible orders to stand and
fight, without giving a yard, was to double the German losses and
deprive his commanders of any chance of using their ski!! in defence.
There had been no pause for the autumn, and now there was none for
the winter. As the year ended the Red Army was steadily pushing the
Germans back through the scenes of their victories in 1941, back to
the Polish and Rumanian frontiers.

The Russian advances, especially in the south, had political as well
as inilitary repercussions. As the Red Army drew nearer to their frontiers,
fear began to spread among the satellite states, Rumania, Hungary and
Slovakia, whose loyalty to the Axis had been badly shaken by events
in Italy. Hitler, already worried about the Balkans and the possibilily
of landings there, watched Turkey too with anxiety.

It was for these political as much as for military reasons that he
rejected any suggestion of withdrawal on the southern sector of the
Eastern Front, and obstinately refused to give up the Crimea at the
cost of losing well over a hundred thousand men, mostly Rumanian
troops. When Field-Marshal von Weichs and Admiral Docnitz urged
him to evacuate the German garrisons in the Aegean and on Crete he
gave the same reply. He could “not order the proposed evacuation of
the islands on account of the political repercussions that would neces-
sarily follow. The attitude of our allies in the south-east, and also of
Turkey, is determined exclusively by their confidence in our strength.
To abandon the islands would create the most unfavourable impression.
To avoid such a blow to our prestige, we may even have to accept the
eventual loss of the troops and material.”^

In the west, although the Allies had not yet attempted an invasion,
1943 saw two heavy blows to Hitlei’s hopes, the defeat of the U-bouts
and the intensification of the air war against Germany. In January,
1943, Hitler replaced Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy with
Doenitz, the Navy’s U-boat specialist, but the successes of 1942 were
not repeated. As the Allies strengthened their defences against sub-
marine attack, the figures for U-boat losses began to rise, and at the
end of May Doenitz was driven to withdraw all his vessels from the
North Atlantic.

Hiller was no longer blind to the importance of the Battle of the
Atlantic, but he lacked the resources to suppoit it. He might promise
1 Puehiei Confeiences on Naral Affairs, 24 Septembei. 1443.

6.V5

WAR-tORD, 1939-1945

Doenitz increased production of U-boats, but it could only be at the
expense of other equally urgent needs, while the Luftwaffe could no
longer defend Germany, let alone spare planes for the Atlantic. Although
the U-boat crews returned to the convoy routes in September, they
succeeded in sinking no more than sixty-seven ships in the last four
months of 1943, duiing which their own losses amounted to sixty-four
vessels, a rate of loss which could not be sustained for long. By the
end of 19^3 the Battle of the Atlantic was lost.

The U-boat war was secret and remote: it was difficult for the
ordinary man in the German street to know whether it was being lost
or won. Bat the war m the air touched him directly, and here there was
no doubt who was m the ascendant. During the year the American
day-bombers joined the RAF. m keeping up an almost continuous
offensive against targets in Germany and Western Europe. The scale
of the raids began to rise too In My Hamburg was devastated by a
senes of attacks, while between mid-November, 1943 and mid-
February, 1944, the RA.F. dropped twenty-two thousand tons of
high-explosive on Berlin

Hitler was beside himself with fury at the failure of Goering and the
Luftwaffe to fend off the attacks or to satisfy his demand for reprisals
on Britain. At conference after conference he cursed the Air Force
lepresentatives for their iixcompetence. Yet he took care never to go to
a single one of the devastated cities apart from Berlin, to which his visits
were increasingly rare. He was indifferent to the loss of hfe ; what worried
him most was the effect on German war production.

In 1938 and 1939 Huler had been warned by Schacht and others
that Germany had not the economic resources to wage another major
war. By 1943 the accuracy of these warnings was obvious. Scarcely
a single issue was discussed at Hitler’s conferences which was not affected
by Germany’s increasing shortage of everything—shortage of man-
power, of raw materials, of transport, of oil, of food, of steel, of arma-
ments and planes. Even had her own industries remained untouched,
Germany would have found it beyond her strength to wage a long war
With the thiee most powerful industrial nations in the world, the U.S.A,,
Great Britain and the Soviet Union But to the natural inequality of
her resources and the slow, unrelenting pressure of the blockade was
added the disorganization of her industries and communications by
attack from the air. Systematically the allied air forces raided one after
another of Geimany’s industrial centres, and, as soon as the damage
was lepaired, returned to drop more bombs. Even if the German people
could withstand the strain of the air war, the effect on war production

656

TWO JULYS

was such that it must in the end place Gcimany in a puiition of per-
manent inferiority.

Thus, if the last months of 1942 mark the turning-pmnl of the war,
1943 may be taken as the year of Germany’s defeat.

Towards the end of 1943 at the latest [writes Gcneuii Haider, or.cc Chief of
Staff to the German Army] it had become unmistakahiji clear tli.if the tvar
had been lost. . . . Would it not have been possible even to of! the
invasion and thus provide the basis for a tolerable peace ? Had the “Forti ess
Germany” no hope of consuming the enemy's stiength on i: . v.allsV \u'
Let us once and for all have done with there faiiy talcs. \< .. nst a kiiKlmg
fleet such as the enemy could muster, under cover of a ci mpie'e and aiiUis-

puted air superiority, Germany had no means of deLree

By the sacrifice of German blood and at the cos! of expoMny tlic homeland
to the enemy Air Forces, the war could stdl be ’ ept going flu a li'lL lungat.
But were the results to be gamed by such a course woith the saci Jive

Ill

The man with whom alone rested the answer to this question a as now
in his fifty-fifth year. The strain imposed upon him by the war, parti-
cularly since the winter of 1941-1942, had begun to leave its mark.
Goering thought he had aged fifteen years since tlie beginning of the
war. During the course of 1943 Hitler began to siilfer from a treinbhng
of his left arm and left leg, which— apart from the peuod iinuteduitcly
after the bomb explosion m July, 19-14 — became steadily mote pro-
nounced and refused to yield to any treatment, in an ctfoU to control
this tremor. Hitler would brace his foot against some ubjL'C* and hold
his left hand with his nght. At the same time he began to dti.g his left
foot, as though he were lame. Professor de Crirus, of the Chantc
Hospital m Berlin, believed that these were the symptoms of Pai kiiison's
disease (Paralysis agitans), but he never had the onportunity of
examining Hitler, and other specialists believed that they h.id an
hysterical origin like the stomach-cramps from which he had suffered
for some time.

To meet the demands which he made upon hiinscif between 1930 and
1943 Hitler must have had an iron constitution, and during this time llie
only operation he underwent was for the successful removal of a polyp
on his vocal cords. He was inclined to fuss about his health, believing
that he had a weak heart and complaining of pains in his stomacii

* H ildcr- page 64.

657

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

and occasional bouts of giddiness. But his doctors found nothing wrong
with his heart or his stomach, and until 1943 he actually suffered very
little from ill-health.

Under the stress of war, however. Hitler began to take increasing quan-
tities of drugs to stimulate his flagging energies. Since 1936 he had kept
as his personal physician in constant attendance on him a Professor
Morell, a quack doctor who had once practised as a specialist in venereal
disease in Berlin. Morell, who was introduced to Hitler by the photo-
grapher Hoffmann, won Hitler’s confidence by curing him of eczema
of the leg, and used his position to make a fortune by manufacturing
patent medicines under the Fuehrer’s patronage. He is described by
Mr. Trevor-Roper after the war as “a gross but deflated old man, of
cringing manners, inarticulate speech and the hygienic habits of a pig.”
Even m Hitler’s circle Morell added a touch of the grotesque, and he
was bitterly attacked by the other doctors who attended the Fuehrer.
Hitler himself never trusted Morell, trying constantly to trip him up
and threatening him with ejection or worse. He evidently resented his
dependence upon him, but the fact of this dependence was incontestable.
At every meal Hitler took a considerable number of tablets prepared
by Morell and had frequent injections as well every day during the last
two years of his life.

According to Mr Trevor-Roper, the list of drugs which Morell
admitted having used on Hitler contains the names of twenty-eight
different mixtures of drugs, including his own proprietary brand of
sulphonaniide (which was condemned by the pharmacological faculty
of Leipzig University as harmful to the nerves), various fake medicines,
narcotics, stimulants and aphrodisiacs.^ When Dr. Giesing examined
Hitler after the attempted assassination in July, 1944, he found that,
to relieve the pains in his stomach, Morell had been giving him for two
years at least a drug known as Dr. Koester’s Antigas Pills which was
compounded of strychnine and belladonna. Giesing believed that
Hitler was being slowly poisoned by these pills and that this accounted
both for the intensification of the pains and for the progressive dis-
coloration of Hitler’s skin. The only result, however, of telling Hitler
was the dismissal of his other doctors, who supported Giesing, and the
end of Dr. Giesmg’s own visits to the Fuehrer’s Headquarters. During
the last two years of the third Reich, not only Hitler but practically
all the other members of his entourage kept themselves going on the
drugs obligingly dispensed by Dr. Morell.

^ H. R. Tievoi-Ropei ; The Last Days oj Hitler (2nd edition, London, 1950),
page 69

658

TWO JULYS

To the strain of responsibility and the evi! effects of MorclFs min-
istrations must be added the effects of the life Hitler was now leading.
From the summer of 1941 Hitler made his permanent headquarters at
Wolfsschanze, in East Prussia. Apart from a period at if envoi t, near

Wimzza, fiom July to October, 1942, brief 'Vbits to the frinil or Ecffin,
and rather longer visits to Salzburg and his house on the Ohcr 'Hilzburg,
Hitler lived the greater part of the years between June, 1941, and
November, 1944, in one of the most remote provinces of the Reich,
increasingly cut off from the life of the country over which he ruled.

Even when the Fuehrer’s Headquarters were housed in wooden chalets
above ground, the sense of isolation in the gloom of this nurlbern forest
was felt by most visitors to be oppressive. But under the threat of* air-
raids Hitler soon moved to one of the massive concrete bunkers em-
bedded in the ground, and made his home m a suite of Iw'o or three
small rooms with bare, undecorated concictc walls and the simplest
wooden furmture. After the lofty spaciousness of the Reich Chancellery,
or of the Berghof with its superb mountain views, the rich crirpch and
the bowls full of fiowers—m all of which he had delighted— the contrast
was striking.

The austerity of Hitler’s life at his headquarters matckcil the bleak-
ness of the surroundings. General Jodi, who spent mucli tunc there,
described it as “a mixture of cloister and cooceiitration camp. There
were numerous wire fences and much barbed-wirc. There were iar-fliing
outposts on the roads leading to it, and in the middle was the so-called
Security Zone No. 1, Permanent passes to enter tins security Ziiiie were
not even given to my Staff Every guaid had to inspect each otticer
whom he did not know. Apart from reports on the military situation,
very little news from the outer world penetrated this holy of
holies.”^

The main event of each day was the Fuehrer’s Conference at noon.
To describe these as conferences is actually to nihrcprescnt their
character: they were a series of reports on the military situation, in
which decisions were taken solely by the Fuehrer A certain number of
officers were nearly always present: Generals Keitel and Jodi, from the
Fuehrer’s own Supreme Command of the Armed Forces; the Chief of
Staff of the Army; the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, or Ins deputy;
the representative of the Commander -in-Chief of I he Na\>; the pei-
manent representatives of Himmler (SS. Gnippeujiiehnr I cgelieii)
and of Ribbentrop (Ambassador Hcwcl). Other commtindcis or minis-
ters would attend intermittently: sometimes Gueniig or Speer would
1 N P., part XV, page :S3.

659

WAR-LORD, 19394945

be there, or the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, less frequently
Himmler. Each of these officers was accompanied by his adjutants,
who carried the maps to be spread out on the big centre table, or the
memoranda and diagrams to be presented. As each report was made
—Eastern Front, Italy, air war and so on—Hitler would announce his
decision, and the officers concerned would leave the room to send off
the necessary instructions. There was no general discussion of the
situation as a whole: only the Fuehrer was allowed to concern himself
with the over-all picture.

The length of the conference varied. It might go on for one, two or
three hours. After September, 1942, stenographers were always present
to prepare a record of what VN^as said. Another, more restricted military
conference sometimes followed late in the evening, and there were
frequent private meetings between Hitler and his chief lieutenants,
Himmler, Bormann, the powerful head of the Party Chancery, or Goeb-
bels on a flying visit from Berlin.

Hiller’s day was almost entirely taken up with meetings of this kind.
He rose late, breakfasted alone, and after the noon conference took
lunch, often with some of the visitors to the conference, at any time
between 2 and 5 p.m. Usually he rested m the late afternoon, resuming
his talks at six or seven o’clock. Dinner might be served at any time
between 8 p.m. and midnight. There followed further discussions and
his day ended with tea m the company of his secretaries — possibly
Morell and Julius Schaub, his adjutant, as well— at four o’clock m the
morning

Apait from a short walk with his Alsatian bitch, Blondi, which had
been given him by Bormann to raise his spirits after Stalingrad and to
which he became very attached, Hiller took no exercise and enjoyed
no form of relaxation As the war w'ent on he dropped the habit of
seeing films after dinner, apart from news-reels. Up to the time of
Stalingrad, he sometimes spent an evening hstening to gramophone
records, Beethoven, Wagner or Wolf’sl/Wer, After Stalingrad, however,
he would hear no more music, and his sole occupation as they drank their
tea in the early hours of the morning was to recall the past, liis youth m
Vienna and the }ears of struggle. This was interspersed with reflections
on history, on the destiny of man, religion and other large subjects.
Soon, his secretary complains, his remaiks became as familiar as the
records; they knew exactly what he would say and kept awake only with
the greatest difficulty. On no account was the war or anything connected
with It permitted as a subject of discussion during the tea-hour. For
similar reasons Hitler gave up inviting guests to his meals and finally

660

TWO JULVi

ate alone with his secretaries, who were under stud in,truciion*^ nol ti)
mention the war.

The dominant impression derived from acc-jiiris of life at the Imclv
rer s Headquarters in 1943 and 1944 is one of interne hiireiloin, nunc-
tuated by the excitement of crises like that caustd b\ MibaMirii's fa!!
and by Hitler s unpredictable outbursts of rage, usually dircciec ag/.inst
the generals.

It IS tragic, Goebbels wrote after a talk with Gocriiig, "Thai the
Fuehrer has become such a recluse and leads such an iinhcuIUiy life,
He never gets out into the fresh air He does not relax. He sits in his
bunker, worries and bioods. It one could only tianster him lo oiher
surroundings! ... The loneliness of General Headquuric; , and ilic
whole method of working theie natuially have a depressing edeet u|kui
the Fuehrer.”^

The long days spent idling and talking up at the Beighot' ’Acre gone
for ever. Hiller saw few of his old Party comrades now, and hltlc c\eii
of Eva Braun, who remained on the Ohersalzbcrg Occasiiunail) his
interest in the arts revived, as when he talked of making his h* une-tiwvii
Lmz into a German Budapest, with a gmat art gallery and opc^ a-hoiise.
But his chief motive in this, as he repealed several times to Cioebbels,
was to reduce the cultural pre-eminence of Vienna, the city which
had once rejected him Sometimes he roused hiinseir on (iuebbcK'
visits to talk of the days when he would be able to get out cd uniform and
“visit theatres and cinemas again, go to the Wintergaricn with niw ill
the evening, or drop in at the K.d.d.K (the Artists’ C'kio) and he a
human being again among humans.”- Bui, so king as he remained at
liis headquarters, Goebbels thought that his dog, Blundu was cluscr to
him than any human being.

Hitler’s ostensible reason for shutting himself up in this way was the
demands made on him by the war. But there was a decner p' \clH)loLdca!
compulsion at work. Here he lived in a private woiid of Iiin owm from
which the ugly and awkward facts of Germany's siiuulion were excluded.
He refused to visit any of the bombed towns, just he rI used lo read
reports which contradicted the picture he wanted lo loniw I he power
of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s persona! secretary and head of the Party
Chancery, was built up on the skill with v Inch he pandered to weak-
ness, carefully keeping back unpleasant informalioii and defeating the
attempts of those who tried to make Hitler awaic ol the gravity ot Ihr
situation.

^ Goebbels Dianes, page 200. ^ Ibid., page 2S9.

66 !

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Hitler had always hated an “objective” attitude towards facts, and
this prejudice became more marked as the facts became more unpala-
table. In the last eighteen months of his life, the refusal to see or admit
what was happening outside the magic circle of his headquarters was the
essential condition of his ability to continue the war. The concrete
bunker in which he immured himself was a refuge against something
far more threatening than bombs, against the intrusion of a harsh reality
into the world of fantasy m which he preferred to live.

A symptom of this attitude was his unwillingness to make a speech
in public. In the last years of his life Hitler deliberately refused to exer-
cise the extraordinary powers he had once displayed as a mass-orator.
After Stalingrad, apart from the funeral addresses for Lutze and Dietl,
Hitler delivered only two more speeches in public. In this same period
he made no more than five broadcasts, while at the Munich anniversary
celebrations of February, 1943, 1944, 1945, and November, 1944, his
speech was read for him m his absence.

Gocbbels did everything he could to overcome the Fuehrer’s reluc-
tance. Hitler’s excuse was always the same: he was waiting for a
military success. But again one may suspect a deeper reason. Hitler’s
gifts as an oratoi had always depended on his flair for sensing what was
in the minds of his audience He no longer wanted to know what was
m the minds of the German people; at all costs he must preserve his
illusions. Until he could force events to conform to the pattern he sought
to impose and reappear as the Magician Vindicated he hid himself away
in his headquarters.

As the allied armies began to press in on Germany m the course of
1944, some of the Nazi leaders began to look around for ways to dis-
appear or make private deals with the enemy. This, if inglorious, may
be regarded as a normal human reaction to such a situation. Hitler’s
was wholly diflerent He was fighting for something more than his power
or his skin; he was fighting to preserve intact that image he had created
of himself as one of Hegel’s “World Historical Individuals.” The un-
forgivable sin was to fail, as Mussolini had failed, to nse to the measure
of events. Hitler’s faith was crystallized in the belief that if only he
could survive the buffetings of the waves which were breaking over
him he would be saved by some miraculous intervention and still
triumph over his enemies. Everything depended upon the will to hold
out.

This belief in turn depended upon the fundamental belief which he
never abandoned to the end of his hfe— that he was a man chosen
662

TWO JULYS

by Providence to act as the agent of the World Historicai Process.*
Every incident in his life was used to support the truth of this assertion:
the number of times he had escaped attempts at assassination, which
he placed at seven, culminating in his extraordinary escane from serious
injury on 20 July, 1944; or the fact that the Russians had not broken
through in the winter of 1941-1942. Anything, however trivial, which
went right in the last two years of the war served llilicr a-^ further
evidence that he had only to trust in Providence and all would be
well.

Inevitably he turned to the past history of the Party and his own
rise from obscurity to justify his belief. In the early i920s he had been
laughed at, too — and been proven right. Had not the autumn of 1 932 seen
the Nazis at their lowest ebb, losing votes, without moavy and badly
split by the quarrel between Hitler and Gregor Strasser? h'ct within
six weeks they were in power. Had not the experts said that Germany’s
economic situation was hopeless, just as the generals said her military
situation was hopeless, and had he not shown the economists, as he
would show the generals now, that if the will was there, nothing was
impossible?

There were other, more material factors on which Hitler based his
hopes of a dramatic reversal of the war m his favour. In his speech of
8 November, 1942, after declaring that he would never lay down his
arms until five past twelve, Hitler referred to the new secret weapons
which Germany was building and promised the Allies an answer to
their bombing raids “which will strike them dumb.” The wc.tpons he
had in mind were the VI, the flying bomb, and the V2, the rocket.
To these must be added the new jet fighter-planes, with w liich the Luft-
waffe was to sweep the enemy from the skies, and new types of U-bo.its,
with which the Navy was to cut the Allies’ supply lines.

The secret weapons were not an invention of Hiller’s imagination;
they actually existed, and, in the case of the VI and V2, were to play
some part in the final stages of the war. But the hopes whicli Hitler
and Goebbels placed upon them were exaggerated. Ignoring the almost
insuperable difficulties of mass-production under the allied air-attacks,
they expected of them not merely increased losses for the enemy, but
a transformation of the strategic situation, a miracle which would set
at naught rational calculations of manpower, economic rciourccs and
military strength. This was a hope to which Hitler clung until the very
end, it was his unfailing answer to every objection, ycl it was a hope
built upon the slenderest foundation, and the secret weapons, too —at
1 Cf. the quotation from Hegel above, pages 351-2.

663

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

least as they figured in Hiller’s mmd—soon belonged more to the realm
of fantasy than that of fact.

More substantial, it may now appear, was the parallel set of hopes
which he built up of a split between the paitners m the Grand Alliance.
No one, looking back at German anti-Bolshevik propaganda from the
era of the Cold War, can fail to be struck by the aptness of much of
the argument.

“It IS no longer a question,” Hitler declared in his broadcast of 30
January, 19^4, “whether the present war will maintain the old Balance
of Power or re-establish it, but of who v/ill predominate m Europe at
the end of this struggle—the European family of nations, represented
by its strongest State, Germany, or the Bolshevik colossus. . . . There
can only be one victor in this war, either Germany or the Soviet Union.
Germany’s victory means the preservation of Europe: Soviet Russia’s
means its destruction.”^

The speciousness of such an argument m the mouth of Hitler, the
man who had signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact m 1939 and who did more
than any other to destroy Europe, does not alter the fact that subsequent
events have shown how precarious was the basis of the wartime alliance
between the Western Powers and the U S.S.R. German propaganda,
constantly repeating the theme of the Bolshevik threat to European
civilization, was quick to pick on any hint of friction between the
Allies, and Goebbels as well as Ribbentrop urged Plitler to follow this
up with diplomatic action to spht the alliance.

One difficulty was to decide which of the Allies, Great Britain and
the U.S.A., or the U.S.S R , was more likely to listen to German over-
tures for a separate peace. Precisely the same question, it is worth
noting, divided German opposition circles in their discussions of how
to get rid of Hitler and end the war.

On general grounds Goebbels preferred London to Moscow. “One
can always make a better deal with a democratic Slate,” he reflected
cynically, “and, once peace has been concluded, such a State will not
seize the sword for twenty years to come But the Anglo-American
formula of “unconditional surrender” forbade much hope in this
direction. So Goebbels turned to the east. Hitler, too, preferred nego-
tiations with Stalm, and expected more of them than from an approach
to Mr. Churchill, whom he described as “guided by hatred and not
by reason.” But he gave the same answer to Goebbels as he gave to
Ribbentrop: nothing could be achieved by negotiation until a decisive
^ B E C Monitoring Report. 2 Goebbels Dianes, page 387.

664

TWO JULYS

success had been won in the east. Only then would the Ri-ssians be
in the right frame of mind to consider the terms Hitler was detcriiUiicd
to exact. As this condition continued to elude Hitler the prot).j.:il

lapsed.

It can, of course, be argued that Huler was right in believing ihjt a
deal between any German Government of which he was the head and
either the Western Powers or Russia was out of the quenicm. Tin', did
not, however, prevent him from expressing the finii conticiion iiiiiil
the last week of his life that the Allies were certain to fall out and buikh
ing the most extravagant hopes on such a quarrel, hopes which he kepi
alive in those around him by spreading rumours that negot’ut’Mns were
about to begin through a third party, or hid alicudy begnii ^

But all these hopes — the secret weapons and the break-up of tfie
Grand Alliance—wsrs subsidiary to the central pillar of HilierN f.iitli,
the belief in himself, in liis destiny and consequeiii ability to in star
any crisis. It was from this belief alone that he denwi the slrengih of
Will to continue the war long after it had been lost, and to persuade
not only himself, but many of those around him, against the c\ idence
and their own common sense, that all was not yet hopeless. To the
‘‘historic” image of the Fuehrer, Hitler was pieparcd to ^avTitke the
German Army, the German nation, and in the end himseif. From this
course he never deviated: the only question was wlicther the German
Army and the German nation were prepared to let him

Little in the way of dissuading Hitler, still less of oonosiiig him, could
be expected from the other Nazi leaders. Of the orighial group with
which Hitler had secured power, Roehmand Strasbcr liad been iiiiirdcrcd,
while Frick had subsided into obscurity, losing the Ministry ot ihc fiv
terior to Himmler m 1943, and being locked upstairs to the lilukii
office of Reich Protector of Bohenma and Moravia.

Goering, still Hiilei’s successor, Reichsniarsha!, Ccanmander-in-
Chief of the Air Force, Minister foi \ir, Plenipotenlriry lor the boiir-
Year Plan, Chairman of the Council of Ministers lor the Defence of
the Reich, Minister President of Prussia, President of llie Reichstag
and holder of a score of other offices, had steadily lost authofily since
the beginning of the war. In 1933-1934 he wus unqueslionahly the second
man in Germany; by 1942, sloth, vanity and Ins !o\c of luxury had
Speer’s evidence; N.P., pad XVII, iahws 2P-7.

665

WAR-i ORD, 1939-1945

undermined not only his political aiitliority but his native ability. He
took his ease at Karinhall, hunting and feasting, amassing a fabulous
collection of pictures, jewels and o3/efs d'art for which the cities of
Europe were laid under tribute, and amusing himself by designing
still more fantastic clothes to fit his different offices and changing
moods. When he appeared in Rome or at the Fuehrer’s H.Q. m a new
white or sky-blue uniform, surrounded by a retinue of aides de camp
and carrying his bejewelled Marshal’s baton, he still blustered loudly
and claimed a privileged position. But it was a hollow show, with nothing
behind to support it.

In 1942 and 1943 Goebbels tried to build up a group around Goering
to capture influence with the Fuehrer, urging the Reichsmarshal to
bestir himself and make use of his formidable paper authority to resist
the growing ascendancy of Bormann. A series of secret meetings was
held between Goering, Goebbels, Speer, Ley and Funk, but Goebbels
was reluctantly forced to recognize that Goering was no longer the man
he had been, and that his credit with the Fuehrer was seriously weakened.
Hitler was tolerant of Goering’s weaknesses, he still summoned him
to all important confciences, and as late as the time of Mussolini’s
overthrow (July, 1943) he was prepared to say: ‘'At such a time one
can’t have a better adviser than the Reichsmarshal In time of crisis
he is brutal and ice-cold. I’ve always noticed that when it comes to the
breaking point he is a man of iron without scruples.”^ But Fliiler was
not blind to what v/as happening to Goering, and the failure of the Air
Force finally discredited the Reichsmarshal in his eyes. There were
angry scenes between the two men, Hitler accusing the Luftwaffe of
cowardice as well as incompetence, and blaming Goering for letting
himself be taken in by the Air Force generals. Some personal feeling for
Goering remained until the end, but Hiller had no longer any con-
fidence m him, and Gcermg kept out of his way.

In any case, Goering never had the moral courage to act indepen-
dently of Hiller or to go against him. Intelligent enough to realize the
hopelessness of Germany’s position m the last year and a half, he chose
to turn a blind eye to what was only too plain, to hope that something
would turn up and to disown responsibility. Only at his trial after the
war did he reveal something of the cunning and force which he had once
possessed.

The last of the oiiginal leadership, Joseph Goebbels, was both able
and tough. A genius as a propagandist, he claimed that no one since

^ Hitler’s Conference on 25 July, 1943, after the news of Mussolini’s overthrow;
Felix Gilbert Hitler Directs His War, page 44.

666

TWO JULYS

Le Bon had understood the mind of the masses as well as lie— forgelfing
Hitler for the moment. But his cynical uitclligence and caustic tongue
did not make him popular in the Party. In the early yeais of the war.
Hitler became very cool towards Goebbels, partly because of the scandal
caused by his love affairs, partly out of mistrust of his malicious wit, but
the later years, which marked the eclipse of Goering, saw Goebbels
steadily rise in favour.

As early as 1942 Goebbels began to campaign for a more drastic
mobilization of Germany’s resources. This was a clever line to adopt
when, as Goebbels was quick to see, many people in responsible
positions were beginning to hedge. Goebbels was the man, not Hitler
or Goermg, who visited the bombed cities in the Rhineland, and who
won high praise for his conduct as Gauleiter of Berlin during the heavy
bombing of the capital The idea of creating a nuire railica! group
round Goering failed, and Goebbels had to come to terms with Himiiiler
and Bormann, but he won back the confidence of a Hitler who was
himself becoming more and more radical. He was one of the few men
with whom Hitler could still exchange ideas, and he was Hitler’s choice
for the office of Reich Chancellor in the Government he bequeathed
to Admiral Doemtz.

Goebbels saw well enough the disaster which threatened Germany,
and in 1943 and 1944 tried to persuade Hitler to consider a compromise
peace. When this came to nothing he was too intelligent to suppose
that there was any future for himself apart from Hiller, and instead of
turning against the Fuehrer he began to out-Herod Herod in his de-
mands for still more drastic measures. It was Goebbels who, in 1945,
proposed that Germany should denounce the Geneva Convention and
shoot captured airmen out of hand, and who persuaded Hitler not to
leave Berlin. The strong nihilist streak in his character was attracted
by the idea of fighting on to the end, however hopeless the position,
and he was the one member of the original group who ioined Hitler
m the Berlin bunker and, disdaining capture, killed his wife, childien
and himsdf when Hitler committed suicide.

Of those who became prominent after 1933 only ihree are worth
more than cursory mention, Himmler, Bormann and Speer. Himmler’s
rise dated from 1934; m the following ten years he acquired sole power
over the whole complex structure of the police stale. As Minister of the
Interior, Himmler controlled the Secret Police, the Security Service
(SD) and the Cnmmal Police. As Reichsjuehrer S.S. he commanded
the political coips cV elite of the regime and, in the H affen (Armed) 5.5.,

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

possessed a rival army to the Reichswehr, numbering half a million
men by the summer of 1944. Through the concentration camps, which
he also controlled, he organized bis own labour corps, which was set
to work in factories run by the S.S. In the east he was in charge of all
plans for the resettlement of the conquered territories. Himmler’s
Reichs Sicherheit^hauptamt (the Reich Security Mam Office), in effect,
administered a State in miniature, the embryonic S S. State of the future,
jealously defending its prerogatives and ceaselessly intriguing to extend
them.

The year 1944 added considerably to Himmler’s empire. The functions
of military counter intelligence, hitherto conducted by the O.K.W.
through the department known as the Abwehr, were turned over to
Himmler, who established a unified Intelligence Service. After the un-
successful plot of July, 1944, he became Commander-m-Chief of the
Reserve Army, took over all prisoner-of-war camps from the Armed
Forces and, before the end of the year, assumed the active command of
an Army Group at the front.

Here was an organization winch, if its ruler could have been per-
suaded to act, represented a concentration of power which even Hitler
could not Ignore At one time, in 1943, an approach was made to Himm-
ler by two members of the anti-Hitier opposition, Dr. Langbehn, a
Berlin lawyer, and Johannes Popitz, the Prussian Minister of Finance,
in the hope of persuading him to take independent action.^ This led
nowhere: Himmler was the last man of whom any such action could
be expected, for two very good reasons

Apart from the efficiency with which he built up his organization,
he was a man of undistinguished personality and limited intelligence.
He lacked the iniliative to strike out a Ime for himself, particularly
if It meant any conflict with the Fuehrer, nor had he sufficient grasp of
the situation to understand the gravity of Germany’s position or to
conceive of alternative courses.

Moreover — the second reason — Himmler iinquestioningly believed
in the doctrines of Nazism, especially Us racial doctrines, with a single-
minded faith. He spent much time and money in developing such
activities as those of the S S. Institute for Research and the Study of
Heredity (the Ahneimbe), and the Foundation for the Study of Hered-
ity, whose tasks were defined as research into ‘"the area, spirit and
Iieiitage of the Indo-Germanic race, which is a Nordic race A racist
crank, he was passionate]}^ interested in all sides of voJkisch and Aryan

^SeeA W Dulles GefmanY^sl.^L!crj;foi{hJ(HY,\')41).Q^^<il)X^r'Ai
* N D. 488-PS. Bye-Laws of the institute, diawn up by Himmler in 1940.

668

TWO JULYS

culture, from astrology and the measuredient of sknils to the inter*
pretation of runes and prehistoric archaeoiogye To Hinimfcr ihc Na/i
Weltanschauung was the literal, revealed truth, and his humoiirless
pedantry, which rivalled that of Rosenberg, bored and irritated Hitler.

This was poor material out of which to make the leader of an oppiisi*
tion, and only in the last days of the collapse was Himmler brought,
with the utmost difficulty, to admit the possibility of acting on his ov^n
initiative to end the war.

The last of the great feudatories of the Nazi Court to carve out his
demesne was Martin Hermann. It was HessT lU^ni lu Scot land in May,
1941, which gave him his chance. Himmler's empire \^as the S.S. and
the police; Goenng’s, the Four-Year Plan and the Liitiwatfc; Ley\,
the Labour Front— Bormann’s was the Party. Succeeding to Hessks
position as Head of the Party Chancery, as early as January, 1942,
he was able to secure a directive laying down that he alone was to handle
the Party’s share in all legislation; “personnel qiieslions of civil ser-
vants” (in plainer terms, jobs for Party members in the Stale admini-
stration), and all contacts between the various mimstnes and the Fatty.
Direct communication between the supreme auiiiorilics of the Reich
and other offices of the Party was not permitted.-

This could be made into a pow'erful position, and Borniann was
indefatigable in working to enlarge his claims. His agents were the
Gauleiters, who were directly responsible to him. In December, 1942,
when all Gaue became Reich Defence Districts, the Gauleiters, now
Reich Defence Commissioners as well, gamed an cireclivc control over
the whole of the civilian war effort. The decentralization of adniiais-
tration made necessary by the heavy bombing concentrated stiil further
power in their hands. After Himmler became Minister of ihc Interior
m 19^3 a clash between the two empires of the S S and the Party was
inevitable To the surprise of most people, Borniann not only held his
own against the powerful Reichsjuchrer S.S., but by the end of 1944
had gamed a lead in the struggle for power.

While both men controlled powerful organizations, Bormarm grasped
the importance of making himself indispensable to Hitler. In constant
attendance on him, he succeeded in drawing most of the threads of
internal administration into his hands. Hitler, preoccupied with the war,

^ Among the captured German iccords is a lengthy and embi tiered^ coffespen-
dence between HiiiimleCs Ahu&iiJibc and Rosenbcig as the I'uehici s Delegate
for the Ideological [Weltamchauluh) Indocti mation of the NS. Pai ty over the
responsibility for the archaeological collections dealing with Last Luropcaii prcliislor^'
which had been captured in Russia.

^ N.D. 2,100-PS.

669

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

was glad enough to be relieved of the burden of administration which
he had always disliked, and in April, 1943, Bormann was officially
recognized as Secretary to the Fuehrer. It was Bormann who decided
whom the Fuehrer should and should not see, what he should or should
not read, was present at nearly every interview and drafted the Fuehrer’s
instructions. The importance of this position can scarcely be over-
estimated, for, as Weizsacker, the State Secretary m the Foreign Office,
says: ‘'Ministerial skill m the Third Reich consisted in making the most
of a favourable hour or minute when Hitler made a decision, this often
taking the form of a remark thrown out casually, which then went its
way as an ‘Order of the Fuehrer.’

In this way Bormann, a brutal and much hated man, acquired im-
mense power. It was a power, however, which he exercised not in his
own right, but solely in the name of Hitler. “A few critical words from
Hitler,” Speer said after the war, “and all Bormann’s enemies would
have jumped at his throat.”^ Like his great rival Himmler, once
separated from Hitler, Bormann was a political cypher. For all these
men the road to power lay through acquiring Hitler’s favour, not
in risking its loss through opposition, and Bormann’s voice, like
that of Goebbels, was always raised in advocacy of more extreme
measures.

As for the others, Ribbentrop still occupied the post of Foreign
Minister, but had ceased to be taken seriously by Hitler or anyone else.
Ley, when he was sober, ran anxiously from one group to another,
trying to curry favour. The rest, such men as Funk, Rust, Backe, Seldte,
Frank, Sauckel and Seyss-Inquart, were minor figures, gratified by a nod
of recognition from the Fuehrer and wholly excluded from any share in,
or even knowledge of, major decisions of policy.

Until the last few days of his life when Himmler and Goering made
their last-mmute attempts to negotiate with the Allies — and were
promptly expelled from the Party — Hitler’s hold over his Party remained
intact. Its leaders were Ms creatures: had it not been for Hitler not one of
them — with the possible exception of Goebbels and Goermg — would
ever have risen from the obscurity which was their natural environment.
The position and wealth they enjoyed they had secured by his favour;
their power was derivative, their light reflected. To turn against Hitler, to
question his decisions would have been to destroy the thread of hope to
which they still clung. If Hitler failed, they would fall with him. If
nothing else, the common crimes in which they had shared bound them
together. But there was something more than fear.

^ Weizsacker, page 164. ^ Quoted by Trevor-Roper, page 45.

67Q

TWO JULYS

They were all under his spell, blindly obedient to him, and with no will of
then own ^whatever the medical term for this phenonienon ma> bc» I
noticed during my activities as architect, that to be in Ins presence foi any
length of time made me tired, exhausted and void, Capacit}’ for independent
work was paralysed.^

The man who gave this account — Albert Speer— is perhaps the most
interesting case of them all, precisely because it is so diflerent iroiii that
of the others,

Speer only came into prominence in the spring of 1942, when Hiller
suddenly nominated him as Minister for Armaments Production, but his
rise m the next two years was rapid. By August, 1944, he was rcspmisibie
for the whole of German war economy, with fourteen million workers
under his direction. It was Speer who, by a remarkable feat of organi-
zation, patched up the bombed communications and factories, anil some-
how or other maintained the bare minimum of Iraosporl and production
without which the war on the German side would have come to a stand-
still. Without Speer Hitler would have lacked the power to stage his
fight to the finish.

The Fuehrer was generous in his praise of Speer’s achic\imieiU, put
increased responsibilities on him, and showed a warm personal regard
for him. For his part Speer was not unaffected by the spell Hitler was
still able to cast over those near him, but he stood apart from the contest
for power which absorbed the energies of men like Bormann. He was
interested far more in the job he had to do than in the pow^er it brought
him. Preserving a certain intellectual detachment, he dismleresijd liim-
self m politics. A long illness kept him away from the Fuehrer’s Head-
quarters from February to June, 1944, but on his rctiirii he became
disquieted at the price which Germany was being made to pay i'or the
prolongation of the war and — more disquieting still— realized tliai Hitler
was determined to destroy Germany rather than admit defeat.

Having arrived at this conclusion, Speer systematically set about
frustrating Hitler’s design, and eventually, early in 1945, planned an
attempt to kill Hitler and the men around him by inlroduciiig poisoii-gas
into the ventilation system of his underground bunker. The plan liad to
be abandoned for technical reasons. Thereupon Speer continued liis
efforts to thwart Hitler’s orders and to saKage something for the fill me.
Yet he never again attempted to remove the man who was the author of
the policy he opposed. The reason is mtercsting, Speer did not lack the
physical courage to make a second attempt, but, as !ic admitted later, io

^ Quoted by H. R. Trevor-Roper^ page 85.

671

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

the conflict of loyalties which divided his mind, he coald not rid himself
of the belief that Hitler was, as he claimed to be, the only leader who
could hold the German people together, that he was, m von Brau-
chitscli’s phrase at the Nuremberg Trial, Germany’s destiny, and that
Germany could not escape her deslmy.

Here, in the self-confessed failure of the one man among the Nazi
leaders who retained the intellectual independence to see clearly the
course on which Hitler was set and the integrity to reject it, is the
clearest possible illustration of the hold which Hitler kept until the end
over the regime he had established and the Party he had created.

If httle had ever been expected of the Party by those Germans who saw
in Hitler the evil genius of their country, much had been hoped of the
Army. So far the Army had disappointed those hopes. For a moment m
the autumn of 1938 it had seemed possible that the Army High Command
might lead a revolt against l-iitler to avoid war/ but the conspiracy came
to nothing, and thereafter, however great ihcur misgivings (at least m
retrospect), however little the enthusiasm they felt for ‘The Corporal”
and his regime, the generals obeyed his orders, fought his battles for him
and accepted the titles, the decorations and the gifts he bestowed on them.

In the strained relations which developed between Hitler and the
Army after the invasion of Russia it was Hitler, not the generals, who
took the offensive. Again and again he reversed the decisions of his
senior commanders, ignored their advice, upbraided them as cowards,
forced tiiemi to carry out orders they believed to be impossible to execute,
and dismissed them when they failed. According to Field-Marshal von
Manstem’s evidence at Nuiemberg, of seventeen field-marshals only one
managed to gel through the war and keep his command: ten were dis-
missed. Of thirty-six colonel-generals eighteen were dismissed and only
three survived the war in their positions.^' Manstem offered these figures
as proof of the Army’s opposition to Hitler, on the contrary, Lhey would
seem to illustrate the docility with which t!‘e generals submitted to treat
ment such as no previous Geiman ruler had ever dared to inflict on the
Army,

Hitler’s ciilicism of the German Officer Corps was directed against its
conservatism and its "Utcgative” attitude towards the National Social.st
revolution. In practice, the revolutionary spirit meant willingness to
^ See above, chapter VIII. "N.P,, ? ,ii i aaI, pag.s 60-1.

672

TWO JULYS

carry out Hitler’s orders without hesitation and without regard for the
cost, the sort of spirit Paulus so lamentably failed to show at Stalingrad
by his failure to prolong a useless resistance until the last man was dead.
In March, 1943, Goebbels wrote: “The Fuehrer is making every effort to
inject new blood into the OlBcer Corps. Slowly but surely the basis of
selection for officers is being changed.”^ Meanwhile, although he could
not continue the war without the generals, those who retained office or
secured promotion were the compliant, the ambitious who concealed
their doubts, or rough-and-ready soldiers like model and Schoerncr, who
went up to the front, drove their men to the limit and did not worry
their heads too much about the strategic situation.

As the war went on Hitler came to rely more and more on the Watfen
S.S. divisions, who were provided with the best equipment, given priority
in recruitment and reserved for the most spectacular operations.
Towards the end of the war the number of these divisions had rusen to
more than thirty-five. The growth of this rival S.S. Army was a particular
grievance with the Regular Army officers. Knowing this, Hitler delighted
to praise the S.S. troops and to give their exploits special mention in his
communiques. This was the way in which he kept his promise of 1934
that there should only be one bearer of arras in the State — the Army.

After the fall of Mussolini, Hitler congratulated himself upon having
no monarchy in Germany which could be used, as the royal authority
had been used in Italy, to turn him out of office. The thorough process of
Nazification to which he had subjected the institutions of Germany,
from the Reichstag to the Law Courts, from the trade unions to the
universities, had destroyed, he believed, the basis for an organized oppos-
ition. The process was not, however, complete: two institutions in
Germany still retained some independence.

The first was the Churches. Among the most courageous demonstra-
tions of opposition during the war were the sermons preached by the
Catholic Bishop of Mimster and the Protestant pastor. Dr. Nicmoeller.
Nazi zealots like Bormann regarded the Churches with a venomous
hostility, while Catholic priests as well as Protestant pastors were active
in the anti-Nazi opposition. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Evan-
gelical Church, however, as institutions, fell it possible to take up an
attitude of open opposition to the regime. Yet without the support of
some institution, the Opposition appeared to be condemned to remain in
the hopeless position of individuals pitting their strength against the
organized power of the State. It was natural, therefore, that they should
continue to look with expectation to the Army, the only other institution
^ Goebbels Diaries^ page 220.

L H.-“X

673

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

in Germany which still possessed a measure of independent authority, if
its leaders could be persuaded to assert it, and the only institution which
commanded the armed force needed to overthrow the regime. The
humiliations Hitler imposed on the Army, added to the military disasters
which his leadership had produced, encouraged the Opposition to hope
that the Army might yet be induced to turn against him.

From the collapse of the plot to overthrow the Government in 1938,
discussion of the possibility of renewing the attempt continued among a
small group of conspirators. Among those who remained active were
two older men generally regarded as the leaders of the conspiracy.
General Ludwig Beck, the former Chief of Staff of the Army, and Dr.
Karl Goerdeler, a former Oberburgermeister of Leipzig. With them may
be mentioned, as other senior members, the former Ambassador to Rome,
Ulrich von Hassell; the Prussian Minister of Finance, Johannes Popitz;
and Field-Marshal von Witzleben. Under the benevolent patronage of
Admiral Canaris, the head of the O K.W.’s Counter-Intelligence (the
Abweht), General Oster, his chief assistant, collected a small group of
men around him, of whom the most outstanding were Hans von Dohn-
anyi and Justus Delbriick; two Berlin lawyers, Joseph Wirmer and
Claus Bonhoeffer; the latter’s brother, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a distin-
guished Protestant pastor who had once been in charge of the German
Church in London ; and Hans and Otto John, the last-named being the
legal adviser to the German air line, the Lufthansa.

The Abwehr provided admirable cover for the attempts of the con-
spirators to make contacts abroad. Thus, in 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
was able to travel to Sweden to meet the Bishop of Chichester on papers
prepared by Hitler’s own Counter-Intelligence Service. A second val-
uable focus for illegal activity was provided by General Olbricht, Chief
of Staff of the Reserve Army, while, on the Eastern Front, a resistance
cell was formed by General Henning von Tresckow, attached to the
Staff of the Central Army Group, and by his adjutant, Fabian von
Schlabrendorff.

A summary list of names cannot pretend to include all those who
played a part in the conspiracy, or even all those who lost their lives in it.
But two more groups must be briefly mentioned. The first, the Kreisau
Circle, takes its name from an estate m Upper Silesia where its members
met to discuss what was to be done with Germany after the Nazis. Less
concerned with planning the overthrow of Hitler than with the future of
their country (their views on which were much influenced by Christian
Socialist teaching), there were many personal links between them and

674

TWO JULYS

the **activists.” The leader of the Krcisau Circle, the thirty-eiglit-year-old
Graf Helmuth von Moilke, who died for his» beliefs with great courage,
was strongly opposed to any active steps to get rid of Hitler. In his last
letter to his wife from prison Moltke pointed to the fact that his arrest
had prevented him from being drawn into the July plot as an example of
Divine intervention. In another letter he wrote that the course his trial
had taken “sets us poles apart from the Goerdcler factK)ii and its sordid
aftermath, right apart from all practical activity.”^ Not ail the Krcisau
circle, however, agreed with Moltke's views, and after ariesl fin
January, 1944) some members of the group became more directly in-
volved in the conspiracy. Among those arrested after the f liilare of the
plot who had belonged to the Kreisau Circle were Graf Peter YorcL \im
Wartenburg and Adam von Trott zu Solz, a former Rhodes Scholar at
Oxford who served in the Foreign Ministry, both of svhum v\erc e\c™
cuted; Theodor Steltzcr, a Landrat from FIoKtcin v\ho had been attne
in adult education; Father Delp, a Jesuit from Munich, and I ugeii
Gerstenmaier, a Lutheran pastor.

The second group, which was also represented in the Krci^all Circle,
consisted of former members of the Social Democratic Parly and the
Trade Unions. They included Carlo Miercndorff, a foimer Socialist
deputy in the Reichstag, killed in an air-raid at the end of 1943; Theodor
Haubach, the editor of the old Social Democratic paper, liambmger
Echo; Julius Leber, another Socialist deputy; and a former trade-union
leader who was to have held office as Vice-Chancellor in the post4Iiiler
Government, Wilhelm Leuschner. With Leuschiier, a leader of the old
Free German Trade Unions, ma> also be reckoned Jakob Kaiser, a
former leader of the Christian (Catholic) Trade Unions.

There is some danger, in talking of the “German Opposition,'’ of
giving altogether too sharp a picture of what was essentially a number of
small, loosely connected groups, fluctuating in membership, with no
common organization and no common purpose other than their hos-
tility to the existing regime. To diversity of moti\es must be added con-
siderable divergence of aims, it would, indeed, be dilficuft lo imagine a
greater contrast than that between von Moltke, with his quielist views,
at one end of the scale, and the radical von SlauiTenberg, who beCiiiiie
the ringleader m the conspiracy, at the other. To quote another instance:
the attempt made by Popitz and Langbehn to wan over liimmlcr was
sharply repudiated by other sections of the Opposition, while up to the
end there was an unreconciled division of opinion o\er the question

^ A German of the Resistance: The Last Letters oj Count Helmuik James \mi
Moitke (London, 1946), page 21.

(»75

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

whether to approach the Western Powers or Russia after Hitler had
been removed.

An analysis of the different groups and shades of opinion represented
in the German Opposition lies outside the scope of this study.^ From
the point of view of Hitler their activities were only important in so
far as they led to action. Yet the bomb explosion of 20 July, 1944, was
not the only attempt made to kill Hitler in these years.

After Stalingrad it was agreed among the little circle of Army officers
who would have to bear the responsibility for any action that only after
Hitler had been killed would it be possible to persuade the Army com-
manders to move. General von Tresckow and Fabian von Schlabren-
dorff thereupon undertook to make an attempt to assassinate him, and
on 13 March, 1943, after a visit by Hitler to the headquarters of the
Central Army Group, they succeeded in placing a time-bomb on the
plane which carried him back to East Prussia. By the devil’s own luck —
a not inappropriate phrase — the bomb failed to explode. With remark-
able coolness, Schlabrendorff flew at once to the Fuehrer’s Headquarters,
recovered the bomb before it had been discovered — it had been hidden
in a package of two bottles of brandy to be delivered to a friend — and
took It to pieces on the train to Berlin.'* Had the attempt succeeded.
General Olbricht and General Oster had prepared plans for a seizure of
power by the military authorities in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Vienna.

As many as six more attempts on Hitler’s life were planned in the
later months of 1943, but all for one reason or another came to nothing.
In the meantime Himmler’s police agents, although singularly inefficient
in tracking down the conspiracy, were beginning to get uncomfortably
close. In April, 1943, they arrested Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joseph Muller
and Hans von Dohnanyi. Too many threads led back to the Abwehr,
which the rival S.S. Intelligence Service was eager to suppress, and in
December, 1943, General Oster, the key figure in the Abwehr, was
removed from office.

Fortunately, just as the Abwehr circle was being broken up, in the
summer of 1943, General Olbricht, the Chief of Staff of the Reserve
Army, found a new recruit in Colonel Graf von Staufienberg, a distin-
guished young officer who had been badly wounded in North Africa and

^ The reader who is interested may be referred to three books which will serve as
an introduction to the already considerable literature on the German Opposition,
much of it still scattered in the pages of German newspapers and periodicals. These
are: A. W. Dulles: Germany's Underground; J. W. Wheeler-Bennett: The Nemesis of
Power; and Hans Rothfels: The German Opposition to Hitler. Other accounts
are mentioned in the bibliography.

“ Fabian von Schlabrendorff: Revolt Against Hitler (London, 1948), chapter VI.

676

IWn ilLYS

assigned to stall dutieb wilh tLe .ctse Arn'v in L.rhii. bt^ in.
man of strong will and persunuiil^, ntv . i lo tbn t ^ i A

rapidly assumed a leading part in tlie cuiK .jc^cv. Vntli . e ib' clupmeftt
of the war in 1943, much wider s. pp <4 i w,i ^ a * he »nid m t- , in

the hope of making a comp^onnse peace w> Ad sue U.-ii inv

from the further dibubters that fiiJer's Danhsu iium m p;. . ^-xL
Slauffenberg drew up dehiled plu'/ io\ a a m wf “L ne )p:(!
to carry out wilh the md of simpatln/c? s al iiic 1 M^rs lu * u 3 e ,
in Berlin and m the German Arm> in if We i liCe -.'Hi I a
to the execution of these pLns rcmaired .he a e' ^ | i dci : thb.

was a task which Stmifienbcrg re served to biUi Ak Uv tk d ,c nai i.e ip
of having lost his right hand, two iingkw of hi. uidcr L*. f .. m.kn ^ h:
of one eye

The conspirators were row working agnr't tim‘ in a ' ^nh!'^ senk
Further arrests were made c^rly 1 1 1944, nudading that 4)1 ..ni \lt hke;
111 February, the greater part of the l/nn hr v ek‘ tran icrrwU

to a unified Intelligence Seiiiec under IL.aiah'^k l>. nb , .j d in ilie
summer of 1944 Himniler told Adtn.ral Cana'-i^ lU a uvp'u.d of
office as head of the Counter lnie’!jg...nee, d une ifc^.h

was being planned in Army clrclc^ and v-m.; ^.rjke v !\a; i ' noiiX ju
came. It was equally obvious thit the Alhe*/ o, :rii

Europe could not be far off Iflhc (A pi ^uon wa'* i > : vuii/w U' nogC' Oi
a compromise peace it was of ih: y e..k a pubM 'le import a ae lo . ci-*
throw Hiller’s Goveinmeiu bch'ic id, ,n ni\< *uhi u • h ^ . .a,

Personal diffeienccs, inevitable undct the aran die ti.)ndii!aih m
which they worked, and differences ol opinn n, e / )v- fiy « ei bu i ^ eae o!
anapproach to Ribsia (whic3i Smurienb:\' ihvuured) It. -a ^ * pswjaa
to the Western Poweis (supported by Kk , C.. eidC % IL . si ai:d irc
generals in the west}, added to the cs )3 d ui.at fhhcb.

On 6 Jane the Allies launched lliL.; iiua um . 5 Nori' a id:\, and tlic
need to act rccuoic urgent. At tin* Iv^ mia* / of J , two h.Jiuai iXn?
cratic members of the con'-jm. a, Juhib I vivr a%v* \d 4" lb. .haeiii,
were arrested following an allamns v nch h auLC’ hu‘' 'Utd ur, kA
make contact with an underg .’Und Utrmuu i a * . i»n On 17

July a warrant was issued for the arnbi 4 1 ( soc: ' h * I a ' ' -t v a . fiav^
in danger of being wrecked b} luidicr uir^va^ 'Ui.an a nrutcr ui da\ ,
if not hours.

Stauffenberg had alrcad> i uuk l\u) allcinpl > fit tai r UiSi t ic aa'- a
ation of Hitlti. On 11 July lie atieuwcd a caalereuc ...
with a time-bomb concealed in his briei-c.. c. i lU m the ao-eniv oi
Hitnmlcr and Goenng lie decided to wait iiiiuii v-as a bctiei cliaiice
# 67 /

l.h — X’

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

of killing all the leaders at one blow. A second chance came on 15 July
when he was again summoned to a conference at the Fuehrer’s Head-
quarters in East Prussia, but this time Hitler was called away. At a
meeting with Beck the following day Stauffenberg agieed that whatever
happened the attempt must be made on the next occasion. Four days
later, on 20 July, he flew to East Prussia determined that his third chance
should be decisive.

For Hitler the first six months of 1944 had brought nothing but an
intensification of all the familiar problems. In January the Russians
freed Leningrad from its German besiegers; in February they crossed the
old Polish frontier; in March the Rumanian. After a pause for the
spring thaw, the Red Army renewed its attacks at the end of June. This
time the German armies, stretched out in defence of lines which Hitler
refused to shorten, could not v/ithstand the weight of the Russian
advance. Over large sections the German front ceased to exist, and in
the first half of July Minsk, Vilna, Pinsk and Grodno all fell. The
German divisions Hitler insisted on holding in the Baltic States were
threatened with encirclement, while the Russians were already thrusting
towards the province of East Prussia, the first German territory to be
threatened with invasion. On 20 July Hitler was at the height of one of
the worst crises he had had to face on the Eastern Front, a front which
had shifted its position several hundred miles nearer to Germany since
July, 1943.

During the same six months the allied air forces continued to bomb
German towns and communications with monotonous regularity and in
March the Americans made their first day raid on Berlin. In Italy
Kesselring held the Gustav or Winter Line until the beginning of the
summer, but m May he was driven out of his positions and forced to
retreat. The Allies entered Rome, the first European capital to fall to
them, on 4 June

Two days later at dawn the British and Americans began the long-
awaited assault from the west. In preparation for the invasion, Hitler had
recalled Rundstedt to act as Commander-in-Chief in the west. Consider-
able effort had been expended in building defences along the western
coastline of Europe, but the length of that coastline as well as shortages
of material and manpower made the Atlantic Wall less strong and much
less complete than German propaganda represented it to be. Only after
Rommel’s appointment to inspect the coastal defences at the end of 1943
and subsequently to the command of Army Group B (Holland, Belgium
and northern France) was a determined drive made to strengthen the

678

i Vtu

obstacles in the way of a landing. Sharp differences nf i tpnhoi! persisted
among the commanders on the best in which to dcfeal an aitcmpled
invasion and about the disposition of forces. In June, 1944^ sixt> rierr* in
divisions were available to hold a front winch extended from 1 Intland to
the south of France; few were of firsFrate qualii>, and only eleven of
them were armoured formations. These were baiely adequate forcc>
with which to hold the west, especially when account was takci^ of tlich
dispersal and of the air supremacy enjoyed by the Allies.

German Intelligence was badly at fault in forecasliiig ilie dale, place
and strength of the invasion. Hitler rightly guessed that Norinaud}
would be the pait of the coast chosen by the Allies -against the advice
of Rundstedt and other generals, wTio expected l!:e LuiJing thrther north
in the Pas de Calais. Hitler, however, also bdkncd, as iLd Romme!,
that a second lauding would take place in the iiai rower part of liic
Channel, where the sites for the Vis were situated, and the eia borate
deception planned by the British to encourage this belief was aacpied at
face value. As a result powerful Geiman forces™ -the bifteeiith Army,
numbering fifteen divisions—were stationed north of the Seine and
held there, on Hitler’s orders, when their intervention in the ligiiiing iu
Normandy might have had great cflect.

The actual landing in the early hours of 6 June caught the (Jermaiis
unawares. Rommel was visiting his home near Ulm on his way to see
Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Hitler’s insistence that major decisions iniist all
be referred to him imposed further delays, and so the opporliinities of
the first few hours were missed. Once the bridgehead had been made
good, Hitler refused to give his commanders a free hand, constantly
intervened to dictate orders which were out of keeping with the siltialiun
at the front, and persisted in believing that the Allies could still be flirow n
back into the sea. Relations between Hitler and the generals on the spot
rapidly became strained, and on 17 June he summoned both Rundstedt
and Rommel for a conference at Margival, near Soissons.

The meeting was held in an elaborate C’ommand Headifiiarters which
had been prepared for the invasion of Brimin in 1940. Hiller huii flown
to Metz and motored across France. General Speidel, who was present,
describes him as looking “worn and sleepless, playing uervouslv with
his spectacles and an array of coloured pencils winch tie held between
his fingers. He was the only one who sal, hunched iipuii a stool, while
the Field-Marshals stood.”^

The Fuehrer was in a bitter mood. The fact that the allied landings
had succeeded he asciibed to tlic incompetence of the defence. When
^Hans Speidel. IFe Defended honnmuh (London, 1951), page 106.

679

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Rommel answered with an account of the difficulties of the situation,
which were only increased by Hitler’s rigid insistence on defending every
foot of territory. Hitler went off into a monologue on the subject of the
V-weapons which, he declared, would be decisive. Rommel’s attempt to
make him grasp the seriousness of the German position failed. Hitler
talked of “masses of jet-fighters” which would shatter the allied air
superiority, described the military situation in Italy and on the Russian
front as stabilized, and lost himself in a cloud of words prophesying the
imminent collapse of Britain under the V-bombs. When Rommel finally
urged him to consider ending the war in view of the desperate situation
in which Germany found herself. Hitler retorted: “Don’t you worry
about the future course of the war. Look to your own invasion
front.”

At lunch, Speidel reports, Hitler ate his plate of rice and vegetables
only after it had been tasted for him. Two armed S.S. men stood behind
his chair throughout and a selection of pills and medicines was ranged
before him. The same night Hitler left again for Berchtesgaden with-
out going near the front : one of his own V-bombs which exploded near
his headquarters hastened his departure.^

Further efforts to make Hitler realize that the attempt to defeat the
landings had already failed proved no more successful. After a visit to
Berchtesgaden at the end of June, when the two Field-Marshals again
tried to persuade Hitler to give them a free hand in the west and to
end the war, Rundstedt was relieved of his command. Hitler offered
his place to Field-Marshal von Kluge But Kluge was no more able
than Rundstedt oi Rommel to stem the allied advance, and by 20 July,
although he still refused to recognize the fact. Hitler was confronted
with as serious a military crisis in the west as in the east. For the first
time he was being made to realize the meaning of “war on two fronts.”

Hitler spent the first two weeks of July, 1944, on the Obersalzberg,
and returned to his Headquarters in East Prussia in the nuddle of the
month. Mussolini was due to visit him there on the 20th, and for that
reason the conference had been moved to 12.30 p.m. It was a hot summer
day and the conference v.'as held not in the Fuehrer’s concrete bunker
(which was being repaired) but in a wooden hut known as the Gdste-
baiacke, or guest-house, m which there was a large room suitable for
‘ Speidel. chapter XIII.

680

rwo Uiivs

such meetings. This accidental chance of pLn-c -.r* j ! I e. I

the force of the explosion confined uiihm Ihivk cowiCa: v . !' i iun!
have killed everyone m the room, while the thin wooden w ut u.*
hut provided no such resistance.

Stauffenberg flew from Berlin dunnr the rnoiraig t.nJ \ e .fccLs!
to report on the creation of new front-line divMon^ Irimi d e Re^cr\e
Army, to which he had become Chief of St.^lT Hl hroaiiii Iu> yr-
with him in a brief-case in wliich he had conct.dvd the h nnh Idle 1 wib*
a device for exploding it a few minutes the mechc’U'r’* AtJ hetm
started. The conference was already proceeding a r.:|V n on ih/
East Front when fCeitel took Stauucnberg m a\ 1 fre mded* huii lo
Hitler. Twenty-four men were grouped round a hir:-a, heuvs. ' uhIiu
table on which were spread out a number of inup** i inrun' c « jmi
and Ribbentrop w'ere none of them present Tic budirer ha-
standing towards the middle ol one of the kmn SkL> (S the laiTr loh-
stantly leaning ovei the table to look at the maps, r Al\ Keae’ anfi IihH
on his left. Stauffenberg took up a place near llrJcr o i hi\ neiif, rest to
a Colonel Brandt He placed his hrid-case under the la'ole, iunnm
started the fuse before he came m, and ifien Vfi the ruui” on the c\v.u a
of a telephone call to Beilm. He had been rone uuh a ule or I f'
when, at ten minutes to one, a loud MmUvreJ (hr ro(tn\

blowing out the walls and the roof, and scdiag liic the di.hu'i
crashed down on those inside.

In the smoke and corTusion, with guards lushiiig up and tiie miiiicu
men inside crying for help, Hiller stacnefed out 4)1 ilw dmur. One c i
his trouser legs had been blown olf; he was cou'rc’* in dnU, and . . t»ad
sustained a number of injuries. His hair wa^ ‘^u*rc!wn!, hi» rfgul ami
hung stiff and useless, one of Ins legs had been huuicJ, a ^
had bruised his back, and both ear-dranii weie foiind la ha di 'ugs.d
by the explosion. But he was ahvc. Those wlu^ h id been ai liie end ui
the table where Staiillcnberg placed the bnei-ckoe were uoic^ dead oi
badly wounded. Hitler had been pR'tectcd, pardv rv ihe om ,

which he was leaning at the ume, and p„rtl} b} liie Imavv vO)iuL‘i
partition which supported the table and apanisi wLiah Slaait ubjig’s
brief-case had been pushed befoie the bomb evpludeci.

Although badly shaken Hiller ws ennot^i, ^ dm, and in the eartv
afternoon lie appeared on the plalform of the Headquumt^N dakcu
receive Mussolini. Apart from a stiff rigid arnn he bi»re tiaces t)l
his experience and the account wiiieh he ga\e to Miissohui .v..s iiiaiLcn
by its restraint

As soon as they reached WolfWikanze Hitler look Mussuliiii to look

fHi

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

at the wrecked conference room. Then, as he began to re-enact the
scene, his voice became more excited.

“After my miraculous escape from death today I am more then ever
convinced that it is my fate to bring our common enterprise to a success-
ful conclusion.” Nodding his head, Mussohni could only agree; “After
what I have seen here, I am absolutely of your opinion. This was a sign
from Heaven.”^

In this exalted mood Hitler went with Mussolini to his own quarters,
where an excited group had gathered for tea. Goering, Ribbentrop and
Doenitz had joined Keitel and Jodi, and sharp recriminations began to
be exchanged over the responsibility for the war. Hitler sat quietly
with Mussolini in the middle of this scene until someone mentioned
the Roehm “plot” of 1934. Suddenly leaping to his feet in a fury. Hitler
began to scream that he would be revenged on them all, that he had
been chosen by Providence to make history and that those who thwarted
him would be destroyed. This went on for half an hour. When he had
exhausted his rage Hitler in his turn relapsed into silence, sucking an
occasional pastille and letting the protestations of loyalty and a new
quarrel which had begun between Goering and Ribbentrop pass over
his head.^

In the confusion after the bomb had exploded Stauffenberg had suc-
ceeded in getting away unhindered and had taken a plane back to
Berlin. Some time passed before anyone at the Fuehrer’s headquarters
realized what had happened — at first Hitler thought the bomb had
been dropped from an aeroplane — and it was longer still before it was
known that the attempted assassination had been followed by an
attempted putsch in Berlin.

There, m the capital, a little group of the conspirators had gathered
in General Olbricht’s office at the General Staff Building in the Bendler-
strasse. Among the group were General Beck, who was to act as Regent
(Reichsve/wesef) of Germany; Field-Marshal von Witzleben, who was
to assume the Command-in-Chief of the Armed Forces; General
Hoeppner, stripped of his rank by Hitler in the winter of 1941, now to
take over the command of the Reserve Army; and General Olbricht,
who was to become Minister of War. Their plan was to announce,
immediately after Hitler’s death, that a group of the remaining Nazi
leaders was trying to seize power with the aid of the S.S. m order to

^ Paul Schmidt: page 582

An eye-witness account of the scene was given by Dollmann, the S.S. leadci
accompanying Mussoiim, and has been caustically le-toid b> IL R. Trevor-Roper,
pages 35-7

682

1 wii j; I V .

Stab the Amy in the back. To fvevcnt thi> -so th* annoj’i
ran— a state of emergency had been declared, Deck and Wiizlebcn had
taken over power m the name of the Armv, a!!'! ordcied llie sub-
ordination of the entire Stale admmi on, tl.c S,S., the fi4ice and
the Party to the Comiiianders-in-Chicf of the Arms, at home ii) tSic
Commanderon-Cliief of the Reserve Army, and in ihe , * 1 coiin*-
tnes to the Commanders-in-Chief of the dlfierent theatres uf o^^eraiions.
The Waffen S,S, was to be incoipcauted in the Army, and M semur
Party, S.S. and police officials to be placed unde*' In Berlin

plans had been concerted to bring in troops from barracks outride tlie
city m order to surround the Government quarter sccuiing l!:c Ocampo
headquarters and the ladio station, and Oi* arming the S S,

Whether these orders would be obe>ed was a gamble, hut if was hop.,d
that — once Hitler himself had been removed— those oifkcjfs who had
hitherto refused to join the conspiracy, whether out of ftar i)r scriipicN
about the oath of allegiance, would sufiport the new Go\ci inienl. the
smouldering hostility of the Army to tlie S S. and the Pail>, the des-
perate position of Germany unless sne could make a comproioise peace,
and, most miportant of all, the knowledge that (he assassinalum had been
successful, would, it was hoped, overcome all hesitations, iiud a number
of sympathizers ready to act had already been secured in the differenl
commands.

Everything depended upon two conditions, the successful assassina-
tion of Hitler, and the destruction of the elabomie commiinicalioiis
centre at the Fuehrer’s Headquarters which wa.'^ to be carried out by
General Fellgiebel, the Chief Signals Officer there, as soon as llic bomb
exploded.

The first of these conditions had already been iri\a!!ilated, but this
was not known to Stauffenberg, who left the Fuehrefs Headquarters
convinced that no one could ha\c survned the eKploslon in the con-
ference room. Reaching Rangsdoif airfield, outside Bedim in the middie
of the afternoon, he sent a message to this clTcct to the ReiKikTsirasse,
and by four o’clock the orders for action were beginning to go out.
By the lime it became known that Hitler was not dead it was loo late
to draw back.

Almost as disastrous as the failure of the assassination was Feib
giebel’s failure to destroy the communicalions centre at the Fuehrer’s
Headquarters. For, as soon as it was realized there uhat was happening,
Keitel began to send out messages to all commands denying that Hitler
was dead, countermanding the instructions issued fnmi Berlin and
directing all commanding offices to igooie orders not coimiersigiied

()h3

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

by himself or by liinimler, whom Hitler had appointed Commander-
in-Chief of tlie Reserve Army and placed in charge of the security of
the Reich.

The fact that the lines to the Fuehrer’s Headquarters were still work-
ing played no less important a part in the local failure of the plot in the
capital There, the Berlin Guard Battalion under Major Remer had been
ordered in from Dobentz to occupy the Government quarter. But the
suspicions of a Lieutenant Hagen, who was attached to the regiment
as a National Socialist Political Officer, v/ere aroused, and lie persuaded
Renicr to let him seek confirmation of Hitler’s death from Goebbels,
the Gauleiter of Berlin. As a lesiitt Remer, instead of arresting Goebbels,
was put through by telephone from Goebbels’ office to East Prussia,
spoke to the Fuehrer himself and (after being promoted to Colonel on
the spot) was ordered to suppress the putsch.

In the Bendlerstrasse the situation of the little group of conspirators
was already hopeless. Once it was known that Hitler was not dead —
they had unfortunately failed to capture the Berlin radio station as
well as the Army’s communications network — and once Keitel’s orders
began to reach the different command headquarters, fear of Hitler’s
revenge, and eagerness co re-insure, became the dominant motives in
the minds of that large number of officers who had hitherto sat on the
fence and waited to see if the putsch was successful before committing
themselves. The plans to capture Berlin totally miscarried and the
radio was steadily putting out the announcement that Hitler himself
would broadcast later in ihe evening
In the evening a group of officers loyal to Hitler, who had been placed
under arrest m the Bendlerstrasse earlier m the day, broke out of
custody, released General Fromm (whose office as Commander-in-
Chief of the Reserve Army had been taken over by Hoeppner) and dis-
armed the conspirators. Fionim’s own behaviour had been equivocal
and he wtis now only too anxious to display his zealous devotion by
getting rid of those who might iiicriiiiinate him ¥/hen troops arrived to
arrest the conspirators, Fromm ordered Stauffenberg, Olbricht and two
other officers to be shot m the courtyard, where the executions were
carried out by the light fiom the headlamps of an armoured car. Beck
was allowed the choice of suicide. Fromm was only prevented from
executing the rest by the arrival of Kaltenbrunner, Himmler’s chief
lieutenant, who was far more interested in discovering what could
be learned from the survivors than in shooting them out of hand, now
that the putsch had failed Himmler, reaching Berlin from East Prussia
in the course of the evening, set up his headquarters at Goebbels’ house,
684

I WU Jli( s

and the first examinations were earned out that llie niin-haiii
had begun.

In one place only were the conspirator^; siicce^ iufi in There
they had been able to count on a number oi staunch sapp«»r!ci heudai
by General Heinnch von Stulpnageh the Military (lo^crnor of iTancc,
and General Speidel, the Chief of Staff to Army Choap B. mh)ii as
he received the code word from Berlin Slulpnagel carried im: the i^rJer >
to arrest the S.S. and Security Service (SDi, and the .\rmy was rapiJl;
m complete command of the situution. Bui here, loo, ihc cmopjrjau
were dogged by the same ill-luck that had pursued them ttio) iph.oid
the day.

In the spring of 1944 Field-Marshal Rommel hail also reached Ihc
conclusion that, if Germany was to be sa\cd, Hiller mud be gid iid ul,
and through Dr. Strolin, the Ohiihw^eiiucistei cf Siiilfuarl, he \m\ >
brought into contact with the group round Beck andCmcKiJer. Rnnjme!
was opposed to an assassination of Hsflei uii the gioiiuus ih {
must avoid making a martyr of him He propoM^l instead ifial itidej
should be seized and tried before a German court. He aceC|ned the
leadership of Beck and Goerdelcr, however, was wiilmg to take over
command of the Army or Armed Forces— his popuiard would liavc been
a considerable asset — and proposed to imthtc arnii^hcc ncgutkUioii ►
with General Eisenhower on his own amhonty, on llic basis iT a German
withdrawal from the occupied ternioiies in the we^l ui rcuin for the
suspension of the allied air-raids on German}. In the cast ilie rmliling
was to be continued, with the German foicts dclciatiiig a line running
from Memel to the mouth of the Danube.

Flitler’s handling of the invasion only slilfeiied Ronimd\ attiOhic
On 15 July, after the two meetings with the Fuehrer in June the
removal of Rundstedt, Rommel sent him an urgent niemoraiidiitii in
which, after oullming the grave sila^aion in the wesL he force an
allied break-through in two to three weeks. 'Hhe consequences will
be immeasurable. The troops arc lighting heroically eveiy where, but the
unequal struggle is nearing its end. 1 must beg }ou tt> draw t!ic conclu-
sions without delay. I feel it my duly as Cominandcr-in-l^-ncf cf the
Army Group to state this clearly.”^

After sending the memorandum by tdeprintcr, Rimimcl luld his
Chief of Staff that, if Hitler refused this last chance, lie was resul\ed lo
act. On 17 July, however, while returning from the 11 out, RonmidA
car was attacked by British lighters and the Field- Marsha! scvciel}
* Speidel: piigtr* 126-7.

LH.— X** C’^’5

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

injured. Thus, on 20 July, Rommel was lying unconscious in hospital,
and the command of Army Group B, as well as the command-m-chief
in the west, was in the hands of Field-Marshal von Kluge, a horse of
another colour. Kluge knew just as well as his predecessor, Rundstedt,
what was being planned; he had been approached by the conspirators
as long ago as 1942, and he had endorsed the view expressed in Rom-
mel’s memorandum to Hitler. But when the attempt on Hitler’s life
failed, he refused to consider taking independent action in the west.
Without the support of the commander in the field, Stiilpnagel could
do nothing: he had created an opportunity which there was no one to
exploit. So, by dawn on the 21st, the putsch had collapsed in Paris as well
as in Berlin, and Stiilpnagel was summoned home to report. Now it
was Hitler’s turn to act, and his revenge was unsparing.

VII

Half an hour after midnight on the night of 21-20 July all German
radio stations relayed the shaken but still recognizable voice of the
Fuehrer speaking from East Prussia.

If I speak to you today [he began] it is first in order that you should hear my
voice and should know that I am unhurt and well, and secondly that you
should know of a crime unparalleled in German history. A very small
clique of ambitious, irresponsible and at the same time senseless and stupid
officers had formed a plot to eliminate me and the High Command of the
Armed Forces.

The bomb placed by Colonel Giaf von Stauffenberg exploded two
metres to my right. One of those with me has died; other colleagues very
dear to me were severely injured. I myself sustained only some very minor
scratches, bruises and burns. I legard this as a confirmation of the task
imposed upon me by Providence. . . .

The circle of these conspirators is very small and has nothing in common
with the spirit of the German Wchrmacht and, above all, none with the
German people. I therefore give orders now that no military authority, no
commander and no private soldier is to obey any orders emanating from
this group of usurpers. I also order that it is everyone's duty to arrest, or, if
they resist, to shoot at sight, anyone issuing or handling such orders.

1 am convinced that with the uncovering of this tiny clique of traitors and
saboteurs there has at long last been created m the rear that atmosphere
which the fighting front needs. . . .

This time we shall get even with them m the way to which we National
Socialists are accustomed.^

^ B.B C. Monitoring Report.

686

TWO JULYS

Hitlers threats were rarely idle. No complete fiuure ean be
for the number of those executed after 20 July, although a list i*!' 4,9Klj
specific names has been compiled. Many thousands of others sveie >cni
to concentration camps. The investigations and exccituiiis of the Uc\-
tapo and S.D. went on without interruption until the last davs of the
war, and the sittings of the People’s Court under the noUus.us Na/i
Judge, Roland Freisler, continued for months. The first trial, held on
7 August, resulted in the immediate condemnation of f'ldd-Mfirshat
von Witzleben, Generals Hoeppner, Hase and StielT, togetliei with four
other officers, and they were put to death with great cruelty, by siow
hanging, on 8 August. The executions were filmed from beginning lo
end for Hitler to see the same evening in the Reich C haiicei!.'r>

With a handful of exceptions, saved largely by luck, all those who
were at all active in the plot, on the civilian as well as tire military side,
were caught and hanged. This was to be expected, but Hitler and
Himmler used the opportunity lo imprison or kill many who had only
the flimsiest connection, or none at all, with the conspiracy, but who were
suspected of a lack of enthusiasm for the regime. In some cases whole
families, such as those of Goerdeler, Suuiffenberg and Hassell, were
arrested. Among others sent to concentration camps were Dr. Schachl
and General Haider, both of whom had been living in retirement, few
who had ever shown a trace of independence of mind could feel safe.

By the autumn sufficient evidence had been collected lo rouse Hiller’s
suspicions of Rommel. After a slow recovery fremi liis injuries, iii Octo-
ber, Rommel received a brief message from the Fuehrer offering him
the choice between suicide and trial before the People’s Court. For the
sake of his family, Rommel chose the former. Tlie cause of his death
was announced as heart failure, due to the effects of his aceiueiit, and
the Fuehrer accorded him a State funeral at which he was personally
represented by Field-Marshal von Rundstedt. Hitler was not prepared
to admit that the most popular general of the war had turned against
him: “His heart,” declared the funeral oration, which Rundstedt was
called upon to read, “belonged to the Fuehrer.”*

It was against the Officer Corps that Hiller's lesenlment was most
sharply directed. To the defeatism, cowardice and cisnservatism which
—as he convinced himself— had balked him of victory, the generals
had now added the crime of treason. Had Hitler been free to give full
rein to his anger, he would have made a clean sweep and imprisoned or
shot every general within sight. But in the middle of a grave military

^ Speidel, page 159.

687

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

crisis this was more than he could afford to do. However reluctant
he was to concede it, he still needed the Officer Corps to win the war
for him. Nor would his own prestige allow him to admit that the Army
no longer had complete faith in his leadership. In pubhc, therefore,
elaborate measures were taken to conceal the split between the Army
and Its commander-in-chief. In his broadcast of 20-21 July Hitler in-
sisted that only a small clique of officers was involved, and this was
repeated by Goebbels in the report to the nation which he broadcast
a few days later Goebbels described the plot as a stab in the back
aimed at the fighting front which had been crushed by the Army
itself.

The Order of the Day issued by the new Chief of Staff of the Army,
General Gudenan, on 23 July, followed the same line. Pledging the
loyalty of the Officer Corps and Army to the Fuehrer, Gudenan spoke
of “a few officers, some of them on the retired list, who had lost courage,
and out of cowardice and weakness preferred the road of disgrace to
the only road open to an honest soldier, the road of duty and honour.”
The next day Bormann issued a directive to the Party ordering that
there should be no general incrimination of the Army and tliat the
reliability of the Armed Forces during the attempt should be stressed.
To preserve the formal “honour” of the German Army a Court of
Honour was set up which expelled the guilty officers from the Army
and handed them over, as civilians, to the People’s Court.

But in fact the humiliation of the Army was complete. The generals
who in 1934 had insisted on the ehmination of Roehm and the S.A.
leadership had now to accept the Wajfen S.S. as equal partners with
the Army, Navy and Air Force, with Himmler himself as Commander-
m-Chief of the Reserve Army and soon as the active commander in
the field of an Army Group. On 24 July the Nazi salute was made
compulsory “as a sign of the Army’s unshakeable allegiance to the
Fuehrer and of the closest unity between Army and Party.”^ On the
29th General Guderian issued a further order which insisted that hence-
forth every General Staff Officer must actively co-operate in the in-
doctrination of the Army with National Socialist beliefs and publicly
announce that he accepted this view of his duties.*^ So far as is known
not a single officer expressed his disagreement with Guderian’s order.
To make quite sure National Socialist Political Officers were now
appointed to aU military headquarters in imitation of a Russian practice

^ N D 2,878-PS, quoting Das Atdiiv.

“ For the text, see J W. Wheeler-Bennett: The Nemesis of Power It is interesting to
note that General Gudenan, who has much to say m his memoirs about the character
of the German General Staif, neither quotes nor refers to this document.

688

much admired by Hitler, but abandoned by the So\ict (iii\vrijriiiii
during the war.

The effects of 20 July on Hitlei’s relations with ihc Amu weic ntu
limited to the final destruction of the once po^vcrfiil p alion of imlcpeii'
dence enjoyed by the Army in Germany. Dcspilc the raeu^a'vs mken
to ensure loyalty, and despite the purge of the Olficcr Ciup> wkch
followed the attempt, Hitler’s distrust of thj Arm} ird

unconcealed. This was bound to affect the desperate ello-ii ahtch had
now to be made to hold the enemy outside llie German To nilscH I hare
was little enough hope of doing that in an\ case, itiere \\d's !e ^ .bll
when the Commander-in-Chief’s attitude to\sarJs hi^ cavC conymandef >
was governed by invincible suspicion and \inaicli\c spite.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT
HIS CLOTHES

By the end of July, 1944, the Russian armies had cut off the German
Army Group North by a thrust to the Baltic; had destroyed Army
Group Centre and reached the Upper Vistula; and had driven Army
Group South (Ukraine) back into Rumania. Great efforts by Model,
who was sent to command on the Centre Front in Poland, and by
Guderian, the new Army Chief of Staff, succeeded in checking the
Russian advance. But the Russians were only temporarily halted after
advancing close on four hundred miles since the last week in June, and
on the southern front, in Rumania, there v/as no pause at all.

Hitler was forced to commit all his reserves m order to hold any line
in the east, but he stubbornly refused to withdraw his troops from the
Baltic States, where Schoerner’s Army Group North, numbering some
fifty divisions, was left to fight a local war which had no bearing on the
main battle for the approaches to Germany. Hitler’s reasons for this
refusal, in which he persisted, were the possible effect of such a with-
drawal on Sweden (with the all-important iron-ore supplies), and the loss
of the Baltic training grounds for the new U-boats on which he set
great store. He argued that Schoerner was engaging a large number of
Russian divisions which would otherwise be used on other and more
vital fronts. The Russians, however, were not short of manpower, while
the Germans were. Guderian protested strongly against the decision, but
in vain. In fact, after the big German defeats of the summer in the east.
Hitler was still trying to hold with much-reduced forces a longer line
than that through which the Russians had already broken. The man who
had once proclaimed mobility as the key to success now rejected any
suggestion of mobility in defence in favour of the utmost rigidity.

The Russian break-through in Poland was followed at the end of July
by an American break-through in France. On 28 July the Americans
captured Coutances, and two days later Avranclies; by the 31st they

690

THE EMPEROR WITHOUI Ifl'-l CLOIIILS

were into Brittany. The German left flank collapsed, and the war of
movement in the west began. Patton’s Third Army striking eastwards for
Le Mans, and the threat of encirclement at Falaise, were tiie plainest
possible indication that the lime had come for an immediate Cicrman
withdrawal behind the Seine. Hiller, remote from the battle, in his f a.si
Prussian headquarlers, and ignorant of the massive supenouly of the
allied forces, especially in the air, refused to consider such a ctmrse.
Kluge was ordered to counter-attack at once and close the /Xmerican
corridor through Avranches and Mortain.

Hitler’s distrust of his generals, to which we have referred, was amp’\
illustrated on this occasion.

The plan came to us [General Blumentritt, Klupe’s Chief of Stair, says] in
the most minute detail. It set out the spcciCc divisions that weie to In; u eu.

. . . The sector in which the attack was to take place was specifically identilicd
and the very roads and villages through wliich the fesixs were to ad\aiii.t
were all included. All this planning had been done m Berlin fiom laigc-scaJc
maps and the advice of the generals in Fiance was not asked for, nor was a
encouraged.'

The S.S. generals at the front were the loudest in their protests iigauisl
the folly of gambling the few remaining aimoured divisions on an att.ick
which, if it failed (as seemed almost certain) would leave ihe German
Army in the west fatally weakened. Kluge’s only reply was that these
were Hitler’s orders and that the Fuehrer would tolerate no argument.

Whe n the operation failed Hitler peremptorily oi dered the attack lo be
renewed. To General Warlimont, who visited the front and returned to
report, Hitler remarked: “Success only failed to come because Kluge
did not want to be successful.’’- On 15 August, when Kluge, up at ihe
front, was out of touch with his headquarters for twelve hours, Haiei
leaped to the conclusion that the Field-Marshal was trying to negotiate a
surrender. “The 15th of August,” he said subsequenily, “was the worst
day of my life.”® The next day he summoned Model from the Eastern
Front and ordered him to take over Kluge’s command at once. On his
way back to Germany Kluge committed suicide: he closed a lung letter
of self-defence to Hitler with the advice to end the war.

Model, who was now called on to perfonn the same task of rescuing
the Gentian Army in France as he had already cairied out in Poland,
was one of the few generals whom Hitler trusted and whom he allowed
to argue with him. A rough, aggressive character, who had notiiing in
common with the stiff caste conventions of ihe German military trad-

' Shulman: pages 145-6. “Liddell Hail: page 421.

^ Colbert, page 102,

691

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

ition, Model had identified his fortunes with those of Hitler’s regime,
and was promoted to the rank of Field-Marshal at the age of fifty-four.
But neither Model nor anyone else could prevent the collapse of the
German front in France.

While Patton struck out boldly for the east and Paris was liberated,
the German Army in the west was streaming back across the Seme in
headlong retreat, harried by the allied forces m pursuit and subjected to
incessant attack from the air. In the circumstances Model did well to
preserve anything from the rout. On 29 August, as the last of his men
were crossing the Seme, he reported to Hiller that the average strength
of the panzer and panzer-grenadier divisions which had fought in
Noimandy was five to ten tanks each, and that out of the sixteen infan-
try divisions which he had got back over the Seine he could raise
sufficient men to form four, but was unable to equip them with more
than small arms. Another seven infantry divisions had been totally
destroyed, while of some two thousand three hundred German tanks
and assault guns committed in Normandy, according to Blumentritt
only a hundred to a hundred and twenty were brought back across the
Seme. These weie the fruits of Hitler’s direction of the battle from a
headquarters a thousand miles away and in defiance of the advice of his
commanders m the field.

France was lost. It was now a question of whether the line of the
German frontier and the Rhine could be held. In the first fev/ days of
September Patton’s Third Army reached the Moselle, and the British
Second Army, covering two hundred and fifty miles with its armour in
four days, liberated Brussels, Louvain and Antwerp. On the evening of
1 1 September an American patrol crossed the German frontier: five years
after the Polish campaign, the war had reached German soil.

In a conference v/ith three of his generals on the afiernoon of 31
August Hitler made it clear that, whatever happened, and whatever the
cost to Germany, he was determined to maintain the struggle.

The time hasn’t come [he declared] for a political decision It is childish

and naive to expect that at a moment of grave military defeats the moment
lor favourable pcliiical dcahngs has come. Such moments come when you
are having successes. . . . But the time will come when the tension between
the Allies will become so gieat that the break will occur. All the coalitions
have disintegrated in history sooner or later. The only thing is to wait for
the right moment, no niatiei how hard it is. Since the year 1941 it has been
my task not to lose my nerve, under any circumstances; instead, whenever
there is a collapse, my task has been to find a way out and a lemedy^ in
692

IHE EMPFROR WITHOUl HIS CLOTHES

order to restore the Situalun. I really think one uin t lor.E'ne d \vo!m. c-his
than the one we had in the east this year. When F.rkl-Mnshal MoJel umi\
the Army Group Centre was notlijiig but a hok.

I think it’s pietty obvious [Hitler continued] that this v ar is no pleasm e
for me. For yeats 1 liav^ been sepaiUtcd fuini the v kIu. I jik ixs ^
to the theatre, I haven’t heard a concert, and I havenh stcn a film, f Lve
for the purpose of leading this fight, because I know if th-ne r nre an m k
will behind it this battle cannot be won. 1 accuse the of

weakening combat olTiccrs who join its ranks, ir.slead d cuairp' Hr.
non Will, and of spieadmg pessimism when Gcnc.al Siaif oisicers po to ihc
front

If necessaiy we’il fight on the Rlune. It docinh nuke a i> diff ru-ie
Under all cnciimstances we will continue this bat Ic unnl, as . o‘d ik the
Great said, one of our oaniucd enemies gets too tised lu i ih , ' s moo.
We’ll fight until we get a peace winch secures tlie h fc of Ihe Oifinaii naiioii foi
the next fifty oi hundred years and which, abu\c all, does iK3i hesnisich i'ur
honour a second time, as happened in 1918. . , . ThingN c- luki Liu* tia red < »iF
differently. If my hfe had been ended (i.c., on 20 Juij } I think I can • i\ that
for me personally it would only have Ixen a release fioni wori>,
nights and gieat nervous suffei mg. It is G*^b '-t f acdon of a seeond, dml a ci)
one is freed from everything, and has one's quiet and c.rrnal |x . Jum ihe
same, I am giatcful to Destiny foi letting me h\e, lu'ceuse I hdwvc . ,

In this mood, strangely compounded of iullexibic determination and
self-pity, Hitler called on the German people for caie nioi c eflbih and for
the last time the German people responded. They no longei jw , or e\cn
heard, the man whose orders they obeyed, but the image oa' the F iiek.rer
was still strong enough to carry conviction, and cosnidion was pemu-
fully reinforced by fear.

It was to fear that Goebbels now op>enly appealed: the Tgnnc and the
German people were indissolubly linked, they must sir.k cti * an {to-
gether. The news of the Moigcnlhau Plan, which provided for i!ic
dismemberment of Germany, the destiuclion td'her iiidusiiiai rcMHiues
and her conversion into an agiicultural and pasUual coiiiif-y, appe ued
to offer proof that Goebbels was light when he dedared ihul llie Allies
intended the extermination of a considerable proportion o( ilic ( hi mail
people and the enslavement of the rest. The Let lii:U ihe Aniencaii
Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jnr, (aFer vdaMii the pLiii
was named) was a Jew wns not missed. The gi mi picture which Goehhels
had been drawing for months of the German peopled fate iiiider a
Russian occupation was now supplemented by oie pio^'pcct ol an ciiiuMy
terrible revenge at the hands of the Western Allies. “The Jew Morgeia

'The transcript is incomplete: Gilbert, pa"e- 105-6.

693

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

thau,” Berlin Radio proclaimed, “sings the same tune as the Jews in the
Kremlin.” With the Red Army on the threshold of East Prussia,
and the British and Americans on the edge of the Rhineland, the
argument had an urgency it had never possessed before. To add point to
It, Himmler announced on 10 September that the families of those
deserting to the enemy would be summarily shot.

The Allies’ plan was to burst into Germany before the winter came,
and to strike at the basis of her war economy in the Ruhr and Rhineland.
Bad luck, bad weather, difficulties of supply and differences of opinion
within the Allied High Command, combined to defeat their hopes. To
these must be added the unexpected recovery of the German Army. At
the end of August this had been a broken force on the run; by the end of
September it had rallied along the line of the German frontier and
succeeded in forming a continuous front again west of the Rhine, a
front which the Allies pushed back but failed to break throughout the
winter. Behind it the Siegfried Line was hastily restored and manned.
Tlie British attempt to breach the river line at Arnhem and turn the
German defences from the north was defeated, while the stubborn rear-
guard action of the German Fifteenth Army holding the Scheldt Estuary
denied the British and Americans the use of the vital port of Antwerp
until the end of November, nearly three months after its capture. Field-
Marshal von Rundstedt, whom Hitler had recalled to be Commander-in-
Chief in the west at the beginning of September, had few illusions about
the future, yet the measures taken by him and by Model, as the Com-
mander of Army Group B, won for Hitler the breathing space of the
winter before the Allies could bring their full weight to bear in the battle
for Western Germany.

Hitler used this respite to build up as hurriedly as possible new forces
with which to fill the gaps left by the summer’s fighting. In the west
alone 1944 had cost him the loss of a million men. Immediately after the
20 July attempt he agreed to give Goebbels the sweeping powers he had
asked for more than a year before,’ and on 24 August Goebbels an-
nounced a total mobilization which went far further than any previous
measures. With this last reserve of manpower Hitler hoped not only to
re-form the divisions which had been broken up on both the Western
and Eastern Fronts, but to create twenty to twenty-five new VoJksgren-
adier divisions, eight to ten thousand men strong, under Himmler’s
direction. This was partly bluff, for units which had been reduced to the

* The Propaganda Minister’s own comment was: “It takes a bomb under his
backside to make Hitler see reason.”

694

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOrHES

fighting value of no more than a battalion were retained as dnisions in
the German Order of Battle. Rather than use the men he had available to
rebmld these to their full strength, or break them up completely. Hitler
preferred to set up new divisions and retain the olu formations m being
at a half or a quarter of their strength. In this way he could keep up the
illusion that he was stiU able to increase his forces to meet the crisis. As a
final measure Hitler proclaimed a levee-en-masse. A prodnnr.ition of
18 October, 1944, called up every able-bodied man between the apes of
sixteen and sixty to form a Volksstum, a German version of the British
Home Guard, placed under the orders of Himmler and organized by
Bormann and the Party.

At the beginning of September, 1944, the total paper strength of the
German Armed Forces was still over ten million men, of whom seven
and a half million were in the Army and Wajfcn S.S. It was Hitler's own
decision that kept these very considerable forces scattered o\er half the
Continent, holding hopeless positions in the Baltic States, tlie Balkans
and Scandinavia, instead of concentrating for the defence of the Reicii
itself. He refused to admit how desperate the situation had become, or to
abandon hope of reversing the situation by a dramatic stroke. Thus
Western Holland must be held to allow the V2s to be directed against
London; Hungary and Croatia for the bauxite supplies necessary for the
jet-aircraft; the Baltic coast with its training-grounds and the naval bases
in Norway for the new U-boats on which he built so much.

Thanks to Speer, German armaments production had not yet bccii
crippled by the bombing. The German aircraft factories, which, m J.inu-
ary, 1944, produced 1,248 fighter-planes, in September achieved the
record figure of 3,031. Figures for other arms showed the same abiliiy to
maintain, and m some cases even to increase, the rate of production over
that for the first half of 1944. The big exception was the output of tanks,
but even this was offset by a sharp rise in the production of assault
guns.

The greatest material difficulty was the despenate shortage of oil and
petrol, due to the systematic allied bombing of the syitiheuc oil plants,
refineries and communications. By September German stocks of petrol,
which had been no more than one million tons in April, had been cut to
327,000 tons, and at the end of September the Luftvvafie had oniy live
weeks’ supply of fuel left. Moreover, Speer maintained arms production
only by drawing heavily on supplies of raw materials and components
which could scarcely be replaced, and by efforts which could neither be
maintained nor repeated. Germany made a remarkable recovery in the
last three months of l944, but it was the last reserves of men, maleriaK

WAR-LOR0, 1939-1945

and morale on which Hitler was now drawing; if he squandered these
there was nothing left.

Everything turned upon the use which Hitler proposed to make of the
forces which he had scraped together. The momentary calm encouraged
his illusions. In the west the allied successes of the summer dwindled
into stalemate west of the Rhine. In Italy Kesselring halted Alexander’s
armies south of the Po. In Poland the Vistula still stood between the
Russians and the old German frontier. A lull settled over the greater
part of the front north of the Carpathians during the later months of
1944, and a Russian attempt in October to break into East Prussia at the
northern end was repulsed. But the resumption of the allied attacks on
all fronts was only a question of time, and the real weakness of the
German position was shown by the success of the Red Army’s autumn
offensive m the Balkans.

For the Russians, having forced Hitler to thiow in all his reserves on
the Centre Front in the summer, now reaped their advantage in the south.
On 20 August a new offensive opened with the invasion of Rumania and
continued without remission to the end of the year. In the first few days
Rumania capitulated, and the Russians were able to occupy the oilfields
v/ithout opposition. On 8 September the Red Army began the occupation
of Bulgaria, and the loss of Germany’s two Balkan satellites was accom-
panied by the withdrawal of Finland fiom the war. The position which
Hitler had established in the Balkans m 1941 collapsed like a pack of
cards. In October the British freed Athens, and the Russians reached
Belgrade, where they joircd hands with Tito’s partisan forces. By the
beginning of November the Gennans were fighting desperately to hold
the line of the Danube in Hungary; by the beginning of December they
were besieged in Budapest, less than a hundred and fifty miles from
Vienna.

Hitler did not ignore the danger from the south-east. Part of the
meagre reserve m hand for the defence of the Eastern Front was sent
south of the Carpathians, and the Germans succeeded in prolonging the
battle for the Hungarian capital into February, 1945, only giving ground
street by street But Hitler had already made up his mind in the autumn
that the new divisions and those which were being reformed were to go to
the west, not to the Eastern Front. This decision was put into effect in
the last three months of 1944, when eighteen out of twenty-thiee new

696

THE EMPEROR V/IIHOUT HIS CLOT IILS

infantry (Volksgrenadier) divisions were sent to the Rhine. At the .same
time the panzer and panzer-grenadier divisions already stationed in the
west were re-equipped, and over two-tlurds of the Luftwaffe’s planes

deployed in their support.

In deciding for the west against the east, Hitler was not thinking in
terms of defence of the German frontiers; he thought sole!) of an
offensive which would take the Allies by surprise, ennbic him to recap-
ture the initiative and so gam time for the development of the ne\s
weapons and of the split between the members of the Grand Alliance
upon which he counted to win the war. If the basis of this ealcuLill.ra
was slender, it was natural for Hitler to think along these lines. For hmi
at least the only choice lay between victory or death. A defensive cam-
paign could defer a decision, but would not alter the situation. The one
chance of doing that was to stake what was left on the gamble of attack.
With this purpose in mind he saw a greater possibility of success in the
west than in the east. Distances were shorter, less fuel would be needed,
and strategic objectives of importance were more within the compass of
the forces of which he disposed than in the open plains of the east, w here
the fighting was on a different scale. Nor did he believe the Amei.c.iiii
and British were as tough opponents as the Russians. The Britisli. he
soon convinced himself, were at the end of their resources, sshile the
Americans were liable to lose heart if events ceased to go fasourably
for them

Accordingly, at the end of September, Hitler and Jodi set to work in
great secrecy to plan a counter-offensive in the west for the end of
November. The object of the attack was the recapture of the principal
allied supply port of Antwerp by a drive through the Ardennes and
across the Meuse, which would have the effect of cutting Liseiihower's
forces in two and trapping the British Array in ihe angle rurmed by the
Meuse and the Rhine as they turn westwards towards the sea. Letting
his imagination race ahead, Hitler was soon talking of a new bieak-
through in the Ardennes comparable with that of 1940 and leading to n
new Dunkirk from which this time the British Army would not be
allowed to escape

The idea was excellent. The last thing the allied commande;s c\p -cled
was a German attack, and they were caught complete'} oii’ then guard.
The Ardennes sector was the weakest point in their front, held by no
more than a handful of divisions, and the loss of Antwerp w nild have
been a major blow at the supply lines of the Anglo-.Mii!. rican .“kimies.
But the idea bore no relation to the stage of the war which hiid been
reached m the winter of 1944-1945. The permanent disparity between

w\R-LORD, 1939-1945

the resources of Germany in 1944 and those of the three most powerful
States in the world could not be redressed by a single blow with the
forces which Hiller was able to concentrate in the west. Even if the
Germans took Antwerp — a feat which every one of the German com-
manders in the field believed to be beyond their strength — ^they could not
hold It. The utmost Hitler could hope to inflict on the allied armies was a
set-back, not a defeat, and in the process he ran the heavy risk of throwing
away the last reserves with which the defences of the Reich could be
strengthened.

The attempt of the men in command to argue with Hiller, and to
persuade him to accept more limited objectives, proved as unsuccessful
as all the other previous attempts.^ To have admitted that the generals
were right would have meant admitting that the war was lost. Hitler’s
confidence is well illustrated by his rebuke to the Chief of the Army
General Staff, Guderian, when the latter ventured to argue that he
was leaving the Eastern Front dangerously weak.

There’s no need for you to try to teach me [Hitler shouted back] I’ve been
commanding the German Army in the field for five years, and during that
lime I’ve had moie practical experience than any “gentleman” of the General
Staff could ever hope to have. I’ve studied Clausewitz and Moltke and read
all the Schlieffen papers. I’m more m the picture than you are.^

By the beginning of December Hitler had collected twenty-eight
divisions for the Ardennes attack and another six for the thrust into
Alsace which was to follow. The main brunt of the offensive was to be
carried by two panzer armies, the Sixth S.S. Panzer Army under Sepp
Dietrich and the Fifth Panzer Army under Manteuffel, which between
them disposed of some ten armoured divisions. The final plans, drawn up
at Hitler’s headquarteis, were sent to Rundstedt with every detail cut
and dried down to the times of the artillery bombardment, and with the
warning in Hitler’s own handwriting: ‘‘Not to be altered.” In order to
keep even tighter control over the handling of the battle Hitler moved
his headquarters from East Prussia to Bad Nauheim, behind the
Western Front.

Four days before the attack was due to begin, on 12 December,
Hitler summoned all the commanders to a conference. After being
stripped of their weapons and brief-cases and bundled into a bus, they
were led between a double row of S.S. troops into a deep bunker. When

^ Rundstedt’s subsequent comment was: “If we reached the Meuse we should have
got down on our knees and thanked God — let alone try to reach Antwerp,” Shulman,
page 228

2 Guderian: Panzer Leader^ page 378
698

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

Hitler appeared with Keitel and Jodi, he is described by one eye-
witness as looking old and broken, with shaking hands. He made a
long, rambling speech which lasted for two hours, during which S.S,
guards stood behind every chair and watched every movemenl that was
made.

Much of what Hitler said was a justification of his career and of the
war. He laid particular stress on the incongruity of the alliance with
which Germany was faced.

Ultra-Capitalist states on the one hand; ultra-Marxist states on the other.
On the one hand, a dying empire, Britain; on the other, a colony bent upon
inheritance, the United States. . . . America tries to become England's heir;
Russia tries to gain the Balkans, the narrow seas, Iran and the Persian Gulf:
England tries to hold her possessions and to strengthen herself in the
Mediterranean. . . . Even now these States are at loggerheads, and he who,
like a spider sitting in the middle of his web, can watch developments,
observes how these antagonisms grow stronger and stronger from hour to
hour. If now we can deliver a few more heavy blows, then at any moment
this artificially bolstered common front may collapse with a gigantic clap of
thunder. . . . Wars are finally decided by one side or the other rccogni/mg
that they cannot be won. We must allow no moment to pass without showing
the enemy that, whatever he does, he can never reckon on a capituladon.
Never! Never

With this exhortation Hitler dismissed the soldiers, and at dawn on
16 December the attack was launched.

Hitler at least achieved the satisfaction of taking his opponents b>
surprise, and in the first few days the German Army made considerable
gains which the German Radio and Press puffed up into one of the
greatest victories of the war. Yet never for a moment were the Germans
within sight of reaching Hitlefs objective of A^tw^Tp. On the contrary,
as soon as the Allies had recovered their balance the Germans fuimd
themselves thrown back on the defensive, fighting hard to hold the gams
they had made. By Christmas it was evident that, if they wanted in avoid
heavy losses, they would be v/ell advised to break oif the battle and
withdraw.

Hitler furiously rejected any such suggestion. Twice Giidcrian, who
was responsible for the defence of the Eastern Front, visited llitlefs
headquarters and tried to persuade him to transfer troops to the cast,
where there were ominous signs of Russian preparations i\ >r a. new offen-
sive. Hitler impatiently rejected Guderian’s reports. The Russians, he
declared, were bluffing. ‘Tf s the greatest imposture since Genghis Khan.

1 Fuehrer Conferences, Fragment 28, 12 December, 1944, quoted by Clicstci
Wilmot: The Stfuggle for Euiope (London, 1952), page 578.

699

WAR-LORD, ] 939-1945

Who’s responsible for producing all this rubbish?”^ After reinforce-
ments had been sent to Budapest, the reserves for a front of seven
hundred and fifty miles in tlie east totalled no more than twelve and a
half divisions. Yet Hitler refused to write off the Ardennes offensive. Not
only was Model ordered to make another attempt to reach the Meuse,
but a new attack was to be launched into northern Alsace.

As a preliminary to this Hitler again assembled the commanders
concerned on 28 December. He depicted the results of the fighting m the
Ardennes in the most exaggerated terms — ‘“a transformation of the
entire situation such as no one would have believed possible a fortnight
ago.” He would not listen to the argument that they were not yet ready.

1 have been in this business foi eleven yeais, and duiing those eleven years
I have never heaid anybody repoit that everything was completely ready.
Our situation is not diffeient fiom that of the Russians m 1941 and 1942,
Vv'hen, despite ilieir most unfavourable situation, they manoeuvred us slowly
back by single offensive blows along the extended front on which we had
passed over to the defensive.

If we succeed [he added], v/e shall actually have knocked av/ay one half
of the enemy’s Western Fiont. Then v/e shall see what happens. I do not
believe that in the long run he will be able to resist forty-five Geiman divisions
which will then be ready. Wc shall yet master te.^

Once again the German attack fell short of Hitler’s objective — ^this
time Strasbourg — while Model’s second attempt to break through the
Ardennes was no more successful than the first. On 8 January Hitler
reluctantly agreed to the v/ithdrawal of the German armour on the
Ardennes front. It v/as a tacit admission that he had failed. He continued
to claim that he had inflicted a heavy defeat on the enemy, but the
figures do not bear him out. The First and Third U.S. Armies fighting in
the Ardennes lost 8,4G0 killed, with 67,000 wounded and missing. The
tcfiii German cast allies were Ctround 120,000, m addition to the loss of
600 tanks and assault guns and over 1,600 planes Most important of all,
while the Americans easily made good ilicir losses, Hitler’s were irreplace-
able. The consequences of his unsuccessful gamble in the west, when
added to the policy of “no withdrawal” on every front, v/ere not long
in appearing.

While Hiller stil! disposed of 260 divisions on paper (tv/ice as many as
in May, 1940), 10 weie pmned down in Yugoslavia and 17 in Scandi-
navia, 30 were cut off m the Baltic States, 76 engaged m the v/est and 24
in Italy. A further 28 divisions were fightirg to hold Budapest and the
remnant of German-occupied Hungaiy. Only 75 divisions were left to

^ Guderiati, page 383. - Gilbert, pages 157-74.

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

guard against the most dangerous tlireat of all, the possibility of a Red
Army thrust across the northern plains directed at the iiidusiriai districts
of Silesia, Saxony and Berlin itself. The divisions and equipment so
laboriously scraped together in the closing months of 1944 had been
expended without strengthening the defences m the cast, and there were
no more reserves to replace them. When Guderian tried to point out the
dangers to Hitler at a conference on 9 January he was met \\it!i an
hysterical outburst of rage. “He had,” says Guderian, “a special piatiic
of the world, and every fact had to be fitted into that fancied picture. A-,
he believed, so the world must be; but, in fact, it was a picture of
another world.”^

Reality, however, was to prove stronger than fiMta.'}. ILder sfil!
insisted that priority must be given to the west and told Guderian he
must make do with what he had in the east. But, on 12 January, the Red
Army opened its offensive in Poland and the German defences went
down like matchwood before the onslaught of a hundicJ and eigli,}
Russian divisions attacking all along the line from the Baltic to the t lu-
pathians. By the end of the inonth Marshal Zhukov was within less tlian
a hundred miles of the German capital, and the Berlin Home Guard
(Volksstum) was being sent to hold the line of the Oder.

Hitler had now left his East Prussian headquarters for good. He had
stayed there for another four months after the bomb attempt, and only i n
November w'as he persuaded to go to Berlin, wlieie he umaineJ from
20 November to 10 December, before moving to Adkrshorst (“Eagle’s
Nest”), his field headquarters in the west.

During the late summer and autumn his health became worse and for
considerable periods he was confined to his bed. The most serious elfect
of the bomb explosion had been the damage to his euis: the tsinpanic
membranes on both sides were broken and he suliered li oni irritation in
the labyrinths of the ears. After a period of rest in bed these healed But
the effects of his unhealthy life, shut up in his bunker v Uhout eveivise,
fresh air or relaxation — not to speak of the effec,s iil Mow!! s drugs‘~
could only be cured if he was prepared to change his way of liv.ag
entirely and begin by taking a holiday. His doctois uigcd him tc' go to tlit
1 Guderian’s interrogation by the Seventh U.S. Army, quoted by Clie* U i W dmot ,

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Obersalzberg, but lie refused. So long as he remained in East Prussia, he
declared, it would be held, but if he left it would fall to the Russians.

In the middle of September, however, he broke down completely and
had to return to bed. Apart from continual headaches and an aggra-
vation of his stomach cramps, he was troubled by his throat. Professoi
von Eicken, who had removed the polyp on his vocal cords in 1935,
operated to remove another in October: he had also to treat him for
infection of the maxillary sinus. For a time Hitler’s voice v/as scarcely
recognizable, so weak had it become.^ His secretary, who visited him
while he was laid up in September, came av/ay with the impression that
he had reached the limit of his strength. Lying on a camp-bed between
the naked concrete walls of the bunker, he appeared to have lost all
desire to go on living.

Yet Hitler never relaxed his control of operations, and by one more
effort of will he recovered sufficiently to get up and resume work. The
attempt of the doctors who were called in to destroy Hiller’s faith in
Morell failed completely and recoiled on their own heads. Brandt, who
had been his personal surgeon for tw'elve years, v;as abruptly dismissed
from all his offices. Not content with this, Hitler waited for an oppor-
tunity to have him imprisoned and condemned to death a few months
later. Thereafter Morell’s position remained unchallenged to the end of
Hitler’s life, while he continued to provide the drugs and injections on
which the Fuehrer was now wholly dependent.

Although Hitler was able to leave his bed and move about, all those
who saw him in the last six months of his life agree in their description of
him as an old man, with an ashen complexion, shuffling gait, shaking
hands and leg. Guderian, who was frequently in his company, writes:

It was no longer simply his left hand, but the whole left side of his body that
trembled. ... He walked awkwardly, stooped more than ever, and his
gestures were both jerky and slow. He had to have a chair pushed beneath
him when he wished to sit down.®

This was his state of health when he returned from Bad Nauheim in tiie
middle of January, shortly after the beginning of the Russian offensive,
and moved into the Reich Chancellery.

The vast pile which Hitler had built to overawe his tributaries was now
surrounded by the ruins of a bombed city. Jagged holes had appeared in
the Chancellery’s walls; the windows were boarded up; the rich furnish-
ings removed — except from Hitler’s own quarters. For, by some odd

^ These mcdicai facts were collected by H. R. Trevor-Roper dunng his investigatioD
m 1945 and are given in his book, pages 72-4.

“ Guderian, page 443,

702

THS EMPEROR V»'ITHOUT HIS CLOTHfS

chance, the wing m which Hitler had his rooms was still undamaged at
the beginning of 1945. The windows in the large room used for the daily
conference retained their glass and their grey curtains; the thick carpet
and deep leather chairs were undamaged, the telephones in the ante-
room still worked. During the frequent air-raids Hitler moved to the
massive concrete shelter built in the Chancellery garden. He took no
risks, and on one occasion at least, in February, when the attack was
concentrated on the area of the Reich Chancellery, showed undisguised
anxiety at the possibility of being trapped underground.

Hitler rarely moved out of the Chancellery building, and in the last
month lived almost entirely in the deep shelter. One of the few visits he
paid was in January, shortly after his return to Berlin, when he drove out
to Goebbels’ home and took tea with his wife and family. It was the tirst
visit he had paid them for five years, an indication of Goebbels’ return
to favour in the latter part of the war. Hitler was accompanied by a
bodyguard of six S.S. officers, his adjutant, and his servant, the last
carrying a brief-case in which were contained the ruehiei’s own vacuum-
flask and a bag of cakes. They spent the afternoon rev iving memuries I'f
1932 and discussing the plans for rebuilding Berlin. When Hitler left,
Frau Goebbels expressed her satisfaction with the remark; “He wouldn’t
have gone to the Goerings.”’-

Two other descriptions of Hitler at this time have been given by the
young orderly officer to General Gudenan and by one of Hiller’s
secretaries.

Captain Gerhard Boldt had never met Hiller before February, 1945,
when Gudenan took him to an afternoon conference in the Reich
Chancellery. The military guard, which was still stationed outside the
entrance, presented arms as the Chief of Staff drove up; in.sidc, however,
they were subjected to a thorough examination by the S.S. guards and
obliged to hand over their revolvers and cases. In the ante-ioom they
found sandwiches and drinks laid out on the sideboa rd. though the air of
hospitality was again tempered by the presence ot more S.S. ollicens
armed with tommy-guns in front of the door leading lo Haler’s study.

When the group summoned for the confereiice was finally allowed to
enter, Hitler met them in the centie of the room. Boldt was the i.!st k) be
introduced. He noticed that Hitler’s handshake was weak and soli.

Hjs head was slightly wobbling. His left aim hung skckly and b's hand

trembled a good deal. There was an indescribable flickei mg glow in ins eyes,

' Semmici. pages !71-5.

703

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

creating a fearsome and wholly unnatural effect. His face and the parts

around his eyes gave the impression of total exhaustion. Ail his movements

were those of a senile man.^

Hitler sat down behind his desk, on which a pile of maps had been laid,
and the conference began.

The first to make his report was General Jodi, who described the
situation on the fronts for which the O.K W. was responsible. Boldt
was impressed by the practised way in which he slipped in brief refer-
ences to the withdrawal of divisions under cover of colourful accounts of
individual actions.

At the end of the conference, on Guderian’s insistence. Admiral
Doemtz raised the question of evacuating by sea the half-million men cut
off in the Baltic States. Hitler rose from his desk and took a few paces up
and down the loom before shouting: “I have said once before, a with-
drawal of these forces is out of the question. I cannot give up the
material and I have to take Sweden into consideration.” The most he
would concede was the evacuation of a single division.

With that Hitler dismissed his officers, keeping only Bormann in atten-
dance The rest trooped out into the ante-room, and while the adjutants
began to telephone instructions oiderlies brought m drinks and cigais
for the principals. The conference had lasted nearly three hours and it
was dark when Boldt dro\e back with the Clucf of Staff through the
silent and deserted streets of the capital to the Aimy’s H.Q. at Zossen.
The day’s work, however, was not over. Later they were summoned to a
further conference in the Chancellery shelter at 1 a.m.

This time they met m a small underground room, less than twenty feet
square. A single bench, a table and a desk-chair were the only furniture.
Guderian took the opportunity to make a strong plea for the withdrawal
of troops from all fronts to form a concentration of forces m Pomerania
and so relieve the pressure from the east. Hitler allowed him to speak
without interruption; only liis hands clenched nervously together
showed his feelings. When Guderian finished a long silence followed,
punctuated by the noise of exploding time-bombs. Then Hitler slowly
stood up, staring into space, and took a few shuffling steps forward.
Without a word he signalled to them to go; once again only Bormann
remained behind.

This was Hitler at his clumsiest: unable to answer Guderian, he fell
back on the oldest of his tricks — or was he sincere m seeing himself as
the genius surrounded by pygmies who failed to rise to the level of his

^ Gerhard Boldt* Die ietzten Tage; English translation, In the Shelter with Hitler
(London, 1948), chapter 1.

704

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

vision? Both explanations are necessary: neither the element of
lation nor the element of conviction can be left out.

The second picture comes fiom the middle of March. His secretary,
who was lunching alone with him, was kept wailing until nearly thiee
o’clock before he came. Hitler was in an angry mood, kissed her h.iad in
perfunctory fashion, and at once began to complain that he could Iru,!
no one. Now his personal adjutant, Albrecht Bormann (the brotiier of
Martin Bormann), had failed to carry out his express orders about
strengthening the shelter.

I am lied to on all sides [he continued], I can rely on no one, tliey all betray
me, the whole business makes me sick. If 1 had not got my taithtiil \lyre!l
I should be absolutely knocked out — and those idiot doctors wanted to get
rid of him. What would become of me without Moiell was a question they
didn’t ask. If anything happens to me Geimany will be left withoi.r a leader.
I have no successor. The first, Hess, is mad; the second, Goeiing, has lost
the sympathy of the people, and the thud, Himmler, would be lejectcd by
the Party.

In any case, he added, Himmler was unacceptable because of Ins lack of
artistic feeling. The question of a successor preoccupied him throughout
the rest of the meal. After telling his secretary not to talk rubbish, he
apologized for bringing political problems to the table. When he
finished he stood for a few minutes lost in thought and then turned to go
with the parting words; “Rack your brains again and tei! me who ray
successor is to be. This is the question that I keep on asking myself
without ever getting an answer.”^

As the faqade of power crumbled Hitler reverted to Ins origins; theic
is a far closer resemblance between the early Hiller of the Vienna days
and the Hitler of 1944-1945 than between either and the dictator of
Germany at the height of his power. The crude haired, eontempt and
resentment which were the deepest forces in his character appealed un-
disguised. They found expression in the increasing vulgaiity of lus
language. It was the authentic voice of the guttei again.

The man who had made it his first principle never to trust unyoue now
complained bitterly that there was no one he could trust. Only Lva
Braun and Blond! were faithful to him, he declared, quoting bredenck
the Great’s remark: “Now I know men, I prefei dogs.’’-
His rages became more violent and more frequent. On one occasion
Guderian’s aide-de-camp felt so alarmed that he pulled the geneial back
by his coat for fear that Hitler might make a physical attack on him. On
’ Zoller, Hitler Pnvat, pages 203-5 " Ibid , page 230,

705

^ WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

^ another occasion Guderian had an argument with him which lasted
two hours.

His ists raised, his cheeks flushed with rage, his whole body trembling, the
man stood there in front of me, beside lumseif with fury and having lost all
self-control After each outburst of rage Hitler would stride up and down the
carpel-edge, then suddenly stop immediately before me and hurl his next
accusation in my face. He was almost screaming, his eyes seemed about to
pop out of his head and the veins stood out on his temples.

When he found, however, that Guderian was not to be shifted from his
opinion, Hitler suddenly gave way, and added, with his most charming
smile: “Now please continue with the conference. Today the General
Staff has won a battle.”^

Years before, Hermann Rauschning, describing Nazism as the St.
Vitus’s Dance of the twentieth century, had diagnosed its essential
element of nihilism. In his conversations with Hitler during the years
1932-1934 he records many remarks that betray the underlying passion
for destruction which was only cloaked during the period of his success.

In talking to Rauschning, Hitler frequently became intoxicated with
the prospect of a revolutionary upheaval which would destroy the entire
European social order. After the Roehm purge of 1934 Hitler is reported
to have said: “Externally, I end the revolution. But internally it goes on,
just as we store up our hate and think of the day on which we shall cast
off the mask, and stand revealed as those we are and eternally shall
remain.”^

Earlier in 1934, when Rauschning asked him what would happen if
Britain, France and Russia made an alliance against Germany, Hitler
replied : “That would be the end. But even if we could not conquer them,
we should drag half the world into destruction with us, and leave no one
to triumph over Germany. There will not be another 1918. We shall not
surrender.” ^

This was the stage Hitler had now reached, and he was as good as his
word. Goebbels shared Hitler’s mood, and Nazi propaganda in the final
phase has a marked note of exultation in the climax of destruction with
which the war in Europe ended. But Hitler’s determination to drag
Europe down with him was not limited to propaganda. It was most
clearly expressed in his insistence on continuing the war to the bitter end
and in his demands for a “scorched earth” policy in Germany. Speer did
his best to dissuade Hitler on the grounds that the German people must
still go on living even if the regime were to be overthrown. On 15 March

^ Guderian, pages 414-5. ® Rauschning: Hitler Speaks, page 176.

Ibid., page 125.

706

THE EMPORER WITHOUT HIS CLOIHES

Speer drew up a memorandum in which he set out his case. Within four
to eight weeks, he wrote, Germany’s final collapse was certain. A policy of
destroying Germany’s remaining resources in order to deny them to the
enemy could not affect the result of the war. The overriding obiigation
of Gennany’s rulers, without regard to their own fate, was to ensure that
the German people should he left with some possibility of reconstructing
their lives m the future.^

Hitler was adamant. On 19 March he issued categorical and detailed
orders for the destruction of all communications, rolling-stock, lorries,
bridges, dams, factories and supplies in the path of the enemy.- Sending
for Speer, he told him:

If the war is to be lost, the nation also will perish. This fate is inevitable.
There is no need to consider the basis even of a most primitive existence any
longer. On the contrary, it is better to destroy even that, and to destioy it
ourselves. The nation has proved itself weak, and the future belongs solely
to the stronger Eastern nation. Besides, those who remain after the battle
are of little value; for the good have fallen.*

From this policy Hitler never wavered. In these senseless orders to
destroy everything and to shoot those who failed to comply with his
directive he found some relief for the passion of frustrated anger winch
possessed him, and it was only thanks to the devotion of Speer that these
orders were not fully carried out. But, as General Haider remarks, this
mood was something more than the product of impotent rage. “Even at
the height of his power there was for him no Germany, there were no
German troops for whom he felt himself responsible; for him there was
— at first subconsciously, but in his last years fully consciously — only
one greatness, a greatness which dominated his life and to which his evil
genius sacrificed everything— his own Ego.”'

In order to keep alive the will to go on lighting, Hitler made desperate
efforts to conceal the hopelessness of the situation. As soon as he came
across the words: “The war is lost,” in Speer's memorandum, he refused
to read another line and locked it away in his safe. Guderian wir. pre eni
on another occasion when Speer requested Hitler to sec him alone.
Hitler refused;

All he wants is to tell me again that the war is lost and that I should bring it
to an end. Now you can understand why it is that I lefusc to see anyone
alone any more. Any man who asks to talk to me alone alwa>', does so
because he has something unpleasant to say to me. I can’t bear that.*

' N.D , Speer Document, 026. * N.D., Speer Documents, li27 , 028. 029

* Speei’s evidence at Nuremberg, N.P., part XVII, page 35.

* Haider, pages 69-70. Guderian, page 407.

707

WAR-LORD, 1939-19-^15

Hitler turned for comfort to the example of Frederick the Great, who
in 1757, when Prussia was invaded by half a dozen armies and all hope
seemed gone, won his greatest victories of Rossbacli and Leutlien and
routed his foes. He kept Graff’s portrait of Frederick hanging above Ins
desk and told Guderian: “When bad news threatens to crush my spirit 1
derive fresh courage from the contemplation of this picture. Look at
those strong, blue eyes, that wide brow. What a head!”^

His private conversation in the early hours of the morning, however,
was increasingly pessimistic m tone. Before the war he had strongly
condemned suicide, arguing that if only a man would hold on something
would happen to justify his faith. Now he announced his conversion to
Schopenhauer’s view that life was not worth living if it brought only dis-
illusionment. He was depressed by his own ill-hcalth. “If a man is no
more than a living wreck, why prolong life? No one can halt the decay of
his physical powers.”

His secretary, who had to endure many such outbursts, records that
after his return to Berlin in January his conversation became entirely
self-centred and was marked by the monotonous repetition of the same
stories told over and over again. His intellectual appetite for the discus-
sion of such large subjects as the evolution of man, the course of world
history, religion ard the future of science had gone; even his memory
began to fail him. His talk w?’S confined to anecdotes about his dog or
his diet, interspersed with complaints about the stupidity and wickedness
of the v/orld.^

These early morning sessions grew later and later Hitler frequently
continued interviews and conferences well after midnight and often did
not go to bed till dawn. He cut down his sleep to little more than three
hours, rising again about noon, occasionally strolling round the Chan-
cellery garden in the afternoon and usually taking a brief nap m the
evening.

Yet he still maintained his hold over those who were m daily contact
with him: the sorcerer’s magic was not yet exhausted. In March, 1945,
Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig, came to Berlin determined to make
Hitler realize the desperate situation of his city. This time, he told the
secretaries m the ante-room, he would not be fobbed off with promises;
they could count on him to speak out and tell the brutal truth. But when
Forster came out of his interview with Flitlcr he was a changed man.
The Fuehrer has promised me new divisions for Danzig [he declared.]
I was not at all cleai where he would find them, but he has explained to me
that he means to save Danzig and that there is no further room for doubt.®
^ Guderian, page 416. ® Zoller, pages 230-L ® Ibid, pages 29-30.

708

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

Sustained by these promises, Forster returned to continue Ihe fight.

Forster, it is worth remembering, was a man who had known Huier
for many years, yet he was still susceptible to his charm and convitiioii.
The same is true of the other old Party members—Goebbeis, Gocririg,
Himmler, Bormann, Ribbentrop — eveiy one of wliorii clung despairingl}
to the hope that the man to whom they owed everything would >ei find
a way out.

Himmler was unquestionably the second man in the rapidly dw’iridliiig
Nazi empire and the most obvious heir to Hitler. But Himmler's position
was not undisputed. In accepting the active coininand an Arni}
Group, first on the Rhine, later on the Vistula and the Oder. Himmler
made the mistake of removing himself from the Fuclirer\ court, wliiic
his failure to halt the Russian advance much reduced his staiithng with
Hitler. In the last six months of the Third Reich it was Btumanii, rather
than Himmler, who was the rising power at the Fuehrer’s Hcadquaricrs.

For Bormann, content to keep in the background and appear solely
as the devoted servant of the Fuehrer, took care newer to !ea\e HillerX
side. He adjusted his wuy of life in order to go to bed and ri^.e at llic
same time as Hitler, and he strengthened his contiol uvei access it) him.
Bormann was still not powerful enough to keep out Himmler, Speer and
Goebbels. But Himmler came little to headquarters now. and Bormann
soon made sure of Himmler’s permanent represenlati\c with Hitler,
Hermann Fegelein. He took every opportunity to undermine Hitler’s
confidence in Speer, while with Goebbels, whose position had been
much strengthened in the past year, he concluded a tacit alliance. Ffiey
joined in advocating extreme measures and constituted the leaders a
radical group, the other members of which were FegcIein, Ley and
General Burgdoif, the Fuehrer’s chief military adjutant, who had
presented Rommel with Hitler’s message and the ptiia! of poison in
October, 1944.

In the middle of these rivalries Hitler’s own position remained
unchallenged, nor did anyone, except Speer, dare to question the wisdom
of Ms decision to continue the war. The intrigues were aimed not at
replacing Mm, but at securing his favour and a voice in ilie nominal ion
of Ms successor. No more striking testimony to Hitler’s hold over those
around Mni can be imagined than the inteiest they still showed in the
unreal question of who was to succeed him.

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

As day succeeded day in the isolated world of the Reich Chancellery
and its garden shelter, the news grew steadily worse. Between 12 January,
the day on which the Russians opened their offensive in Poland, and 12
April, the day on which the U.S. Ninth Army crossed the Elbe, the Allies
inflicted a total defeat upon the German Army.

In January the Russians overran Poland and reached the Oder. They
broke into Silesia, the one German industrial district which had escaped
major damage from air attack, and by February were threatening
Berlin and Vienna.

For a time the Germans checked the Russians on the Oder, only to
see their western defences crumble. In March the Americans and the
British crossed the Rhine, and, one after another, the famous names of
the Rhineland cities appeared m the allied communiques. Hitler brought
in Kesselring to replace Rundstedt as Commander-in-Chief West,
but Kesselring could no more stem the tide than anyone else. On 1 April
Model’s Army Group was encircled in the Ruhr. Less than three weeks
later they had joined the rest of the two milhon prisoners captured m
the west since D-day, while Model in despair committed suicide in a
wood near Duisburg. An organized front no longer existed in the west,
and on the evening of 1 1 April the Americans reached the Elbe near
Magdeburg, in the very heart of Germany.

On 9 April Koenigsberg, the capital of East Prussia, fell; on the 13th
the Russians captured Vienna, and on the 16th they broke the defence
line on the Oder. The way to Berlin was open, and it was now only a
question of time before the armies advancing from the west met those
coming from the east and cut Germany m two.

Hitler had lost all control over events, and by April he had the greatest
difficulty in discovering what was happening. The Germans went on
fighting — in the east, with the courage of despair— but there was no
longer any organized direction of the war. This is amply confirmed by
such records as survive of the conferences Hitler held from the beginning
of January onwards. Once the operations in the Ardennes had failed all
sense of purpose was lost. The discussions of the military situation in
the early months of 1945 are rambling, confused and futile. The leader-
ship was not only morally, but intellectually, bankrupt. Hours were
wasted in discussion of questions of detail and local operations, inter-

710

THE EMPEKOR WIIHOUT HIS riOFHES

rupted by reminiscences and recriminations. Hiller no longer showed
any grasp of the situation. His orders became wilder and more con-
tradictory, his demands more impossible, his decisions more arbitrary.
His one answer to every proposal was: No wuhdraual. By his refusal to
let his commanders make Iheir stand behind the Rhine, and his
that they must fight to the west of the river, he flung away a score of
divisions needlessly. As late as 10 March he rejected a request to willi-
draw from northern Norway, and still would not agree to the evacuation
of the troops cut off along the eastern shores of the Bailie.

Hitler had long scorned the belief that war can be waged without
resort to terrorism. A succession of orders from his !ieadquarler»- 'Such
as the notorious '"Commissar” and "Commando” orders- demanded
deliberate brutality in dealing with the enemy. In February. 1945, there
were prolonged discussions of a proposal made by CioebbeK and eagerly
seized on by Hitler that the German High Command should denounce
the Geneva and other international conventions, shoot all captured
enemy airmen out of hand and make use of the new poison gases, 'fabun
and Sarin. Characteristically, the argument that most aUraeied Hiller
was the effect this would have on the German soldier. Sweeping aside
the legal argument, he declared:

To hell with that. ... If I make it clear that I show no consideration for
prisoners but treat them without any consideration for their rights, regard-
less of reprisals, then quite a few (Germans) wifi think twice before they
desert,'*'

Only with the greatest difficulty was he restrained from taking this
desperate and irresponsible step.

Without bothering to investigate the facts he ordered the dismissal,
degradation and even execution of officers who, after fighling against
overwhelming forces, were forced to give ground. E\en ihc Ifajfen
5.5. was not exempt from his vicious temper. When Sepp Dietrich,
once the leader of his persona! bodyguard and mm in command of the
Sixth S.S. Panzer Army, was driven back into Vienna, Hitler radioed:

The Fuehrer belie\cs that the troops ha\c not fought as the situation
demanded and orders that the S.S. Divisions Aiklf Hnkr, Das Rekk,
Totenkopfy and HohensUnffen, be stripped of their aim-bands.

When Dietrich received this he summoned his diMsional commanders
and, throwing the message on ihc table, exclaimed : "ThereN your reward
for all that youVe done these past five years.” Rather than cairy out the
order, he cabled back, he would shoot himself.-

^ Gilbert, Appendix, page 179. " Shulman, pages 3!^-?.

711

WAii-'LORD, 1939-1945

Hitler stil! tried to buoy bim’^clf up with the belief that the new
weapons, of which he nc\er ceased to talk, w^ouM work a miracle* But
gradually these hopes too faded and his continued references to them
became no more than the meciwmtal repetition of ritual phrases. The
Vis and V2s had come and pone. The Ardennes offensive had been
launched and failed. The jet lighters never texjk the air. The U-boat fleet,
reinforced by the new tspes on which Hiller and Doenitz had built the
most extravagant cxpecialions, pul to sea but were routed.

The last hope of all was a split in the Grand Alliance. At his con-
ference on 27 January liidcr sudden!} asked:

Do you think that, deep down inside, the English are enthusiastic about the
Russian desclopments?

Gofring: They certainly didn’t plan that we hold them off while the
Russians conquer all of Ciermany. ff this goes on we will get a telegram
m a few' days. . . .

Jodl: Thev ha\e always regarded the Russians with suspicion.

Hi her: I ha\c ordered that a report be placed into their hands that the
Russians arc organizing twi) hundred thousand of our men, led by German
officers and completely mfecied w ih Communism, who will then be marched
into Germany, , . , That will make them ted as if someone had stuck a needle
into them.

Gocwng: They entered the war to prevent us from going into the east,
not to have the east come to the Ailant^cd

Hitler’s political instinct was stil! keen, but time was against him.
Churchill, Roostwcli and Stalin, meeting at Yalta in February, patched
lip their differences and contrived an agreement which, howwer im-
permanent, outlasted Huler. The demand for unconditional surrender
was reaffirmed, and the allied armies never paused in their advance.

The level to wliich the hopes of the German leaders were now reduced
is well illustrated by fheii reception of the news of Roosevelt’s death on
12 April The slor> is recounted h> Sefm^erm von Krosigk, Hitler’s
egregious Fiiviiue and confirmed h> othei e^e-w'itnesses.

A few^days before the I2fk iGocbbcK fold Schwerin voii Krosigk), in
order to comfort the Inichter, he had read him the passage in Carlyle’s
History of Frederick the ikeat m which the author describes the
ditriciiltics confronting the PrusMan king m the winter of I76l"-!762:

How the great king himself did not sec any way out and did not know what
to do ; how all hss generals and ministers were convinced that he was finished ;
how the eneiB} already looked upon Prussia as vanquished; how the future

* GJbert, paces 2 17-S

712

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

appeared cfitirely daik, and how in his last letter to the Minister Graf
Finckenstein^ he set himself a time limit: if there no change by 15 Feb-
ruar> he would give up and take poison. “Brave king!" Carlyle writes,
“waii but a little while, and the days of your suffcHiig will be o\er* Behind
the clouds the sun of your good fortune is already rising and soon will
show Itself to > 011 /’ On 12 February the C/anna died; the Miracle of the
House of Biandenburg had come to pa<^s, Tiic Fuehrer, Goebbeis said, had
teais in his eyes.^

Thereupon Goebbeis sent for the horoscopes of the Fuehrer and of the
Weiniar Republic, both of which, he claimed, had been astonishingly
right about the war and now predsUed a great success for Germain
111 the latter half of April, follow'cd by peace in August.

Goebbeis was so taken with this historical parallel Ihal on 12 April,
wbilc paying a visit to the headquarters of the Ninth Anin «il Kucstrin,
he tried to convince General Busse and his Staff that :

for reasons of Historical Necessity and Justice a change foitiine must
occur now just as it did in the Seven Ycais VVai wifii the MuJcle ol the
House of Brandenburg. One of the officers present a^-ked somewhat
sceptically which C/anna was to die this time. To this Goeblxds replied that
he did not know either, but that Fate held ail sorts of piissihihtitw in hei
hands. He then went back home and received the news 0 ! RoosevcIFs dcaliu
Immediately he telephoned to Busse and said: “The ( /ariria is deadC
Busse told him that this made a great inipicssion on his soldiers; now the}
saw another chance.^

Ill his excitement Goebbeis called for champagiR' and rang up
Hitler:

“My Fuehrer, I congratulate youl Roosevelt is deud. if is written in
tlie stars that the second half of \pril will be the tbiiiiiig-point for us.
This is Friday, 13 April It is the turning“pomt.“^

Goebbeis’ mood was fully shaied by Hitler, but the sense vf relief
did not last long. When leports from the front showed iLat Roosevelfs
death had not alfeclcd the cneniy's opciaiions, GocbbcK remarked
disconsolate!} : "Perhap> I ale has again been ciuel and made fooK of
usA"

In the middle of April the Na/i Lmpire which had once sHetehed to
the Gaucasiis and the MlaiUic v^a^ lediiced io a narrow lorndor in llie

^ A> Ml r!c\oj-Ropci puinisout, neithu tlic taut oiur tlic quo! aiCituuirilc
riic Miiiistci Us I liJokl uiolc not i uKken^ku- hat the Ceunt

ifAtgciisuii,

“Schwcim von Kr.ssiuk's dui> UinpuhhJicdi * Ibid

^ Lvider.ee off uui Haixi/cttcl, tme ol the saietane m the Piop/ginda Ministry,
quoted b> If. R. Tievoi Ropei, p.iye^ H2 3.

’ Scmmicr, p^igc 193.

713

\v\R-i ORU, !9"9*1945

heart of Geroiany little more than a huntlred niile^ vude. Hitler had
reached the end of the road.

Shortly after f Iil!er% hopc% had been raised and dashed by Roose\elfs
death, Eva Braun aimed unexpecteuiy in Berlin and, defying Hitlefs
orders, announced liei intenliontif slaying with him to the end. For some
time GoebbeK had been urging IIitltT to remain in Berlin and make an
ending in the besiegeii cuy wc^rths of an admirer of WagneFs Goetier-
daemerwig, Goebbek sci^rned un\ sugTe4ion that by leaving the capital
he might allow the t’wo nnihon people still living there to escape the
horrors of a pitched battle fougla m the streets of the city. 'If a single
while flag is hoisted in Berlin,’' he declared, 'i shall not hesitate to have
the whole street and all its inhabitants blown up. This has the full
authority of the Fuehrer.’'^

None thx less I filler’s mind was not yet made up. Preparations were in
train for the Government leave Berlin and move to the ‘'National
Redoubt” in the heart of lie Bavarian Aljw, round Bcrchtesgaden, the
homeland of the Na/i movement, where the Fuehrer was expected to
make his last stand, \afjuus ministries and commands had already been
tninsfcrred to the Redoubt area, and tiie time had come when Hitler
himself must fo!k»w if he was ''till tii get through the narrow corridor
left between the Rus>ain and American armies.

Hitler’s original plan \vd> tu lc,Ae for the south on 20 April, his
fifty-sixth biithdav, hut at the conference on the 20th, following the
reception and congratulations he still hesitated. For the last time, all
the Nazi hierarchs were present --Gocring, Himmler, Gocbbels, Ribben-
trop, Bnrmaiui, Speer- tugeilier wuh the chiefs of the three Services.
1 heir adviiC was in favour of his leamrg Berlin. The most Hitler would
agrtx" to, however, w,!^ the iwtahhshmenl of Nonhern and Southern
Commands, in case (seiman) should he cut in two by the allied advance.
There and then he app unted Aduura! Doemtz to assume the full
rcsporoibihly :n t!ie nort!:, hat, althoiigh Kcsseiring was nominated for
the Si)U!litTii ronmiand. Hitler leU open the possibility that he might
move to the sceiili ^nd ta\e the direction of the war there into Iiis own
hand'.

On the 21st Hitler ordered an all-out attack on the Russians besieging
Berlin. Every man was to be thrown in, and any commander who with-

' SteiErJcr, paiac FU

714

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

held forces was to be shot. The direction of the attack Hitler confided
to an S.S. general, Obergmppenfuehrer Steiner, and he built the most
exaggerated hopes on the success which he anticipated from the
operation. It was the disappointment of these hopes which led him
finally to make up his mind and refuse to leave the capital
For Steiner's attack was never launched. The withdrawal of troops to
provide the forces necessary allowed the Russians to break through the
city's outer defences in the north, and Hitler's plan foundered in
confusion. Throughout the morning of the 22nd a series of teleplione
calls from the Bunker failed to elicit any new? of what was happeniiif.
By the time the conference met at Ihice u cluck in liie afternoon there
was still no news of Steiner, and Hitler was on the wrge of one of Ins
worst outbursts.

The storm burst during the confeience, which Loted for thiec hours
and left everyone w'ho took part in it shaken and exhausted. In a mii-
versal gesture of denunciation Hitler cursed them all fur their cowardice,
treachery and incompetence. The end had come, he declared. He conk!
no longer go on. There was nothing left but to die He would meet his
end there, in Berlin, those who wished could go the but he

would never move. From this resolution he was fiOt to be mo\ctl Tele-
phone calls from Himmler and Doenilz, and the erilreaties of Ins own
Staff, had no effect. Acting on his decision, he dictated an announcement
to be read over the wireless, dedariog that the Tudirei in Berlui and
that he would remain there to the very last.

The implications of Hitler's declaration weic more far-reaciiing tfian
may appear at first sight. For, since 1941, Hitler had taken over the
immediate day-to-day direction of the w'ur as the active coannanilcr-
in-cliief of the German Arm>. Now that he wxts forced to admit the fact
of defeat, however, the man who hud mdsted on piulonging the war
against the advice of liis generals refused to take an> further respiinsi-
bility. Instead, he instiucted his two chief assiMunts, Generals Keild
and Jodi, to leave at once for Berchtesgadeii and declined to give them
further orders. All the grandiloquent talk of dving in Berlin camiof
disguise the fact that this petulant decisivm was u gross derehclion ot
his duty to the troops still fighting under his command and an action
wholly at variance with the most elementary mslilary tniditiori.

Jodi later described to General Roller, the Luftwaffe C'hief i>f Staff,
their unavailing efforts to persuade Hiller to change his iiiirid.

Hitler declared that he had decided to stav in Bci tin, lead its defence and then
at the last moment shoot himself. Vor physical reasons he was unable to

7!5

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

take part m the fighting personally, noi did he wish to, for he could not run
the risk of falling into enemy hands. We all attempted to bring him over
from this decision and even offered to move troops from the west to fight in
the east. His answer was that everything was falling to pieces anyway, and
that he could do no more: that should be left to the Reichsmaishal
(Goermg), When someone remarked that no soldier would fight for the
Reichsmarshal, Hitler retorted : ''What do you mean, fight ? There’s precious
little more fighting to be done and, if it comes to negotiating, the Reichs-
marshal can do better than I can."’ The latest development of the situation
had made the deepest impression on him, he spoke ail the time of treachery
and failure, of conuption in the leadership and m the ranks. Even the S.S
now told him Hesd

By the time Jodi and Keitel left Hitler on the evening of 22 April he
had recovered his self-control and talked calmly to Keitel of the possi-
bility of the Twelfth Arm>, then fighting on the Elbe under General
Wenck, coming to the relief of Berlin. But his decision to stay m the
capital was irrevocable, as a logical consequence he began to burn his
papers and invited Goebbels, the advocate of a "world-historical end,"
to join him in the Fuehrerbunker.

The setting in which Hitler played out the last scene of all was well
suited to the end of .so strange a history. The Chancellery air-raid shelter,
IE which the events of 22 April had taken place, was buried fifty feet
beneath the ground, and built in two storeys covered with a massive
canopy of reinforced concrete. The lower of the storeys formed the
Fuehrerbunker. It was divided into eighteen small rooms grouped on
either side of* a central passageway. Half of this passage was closed by a
partition and used for the daily conferences. A suite of six rooms was
set aside for Hitler and Eva Braun. Eva had a bed-sittmg-room, a bath-
room and a dressing room; Hulcr a bedroom and a study, the sole
decoration in which was a po’-trait of Frederick the Great. \ map-room
used for small conference^, a icicphone exchange, a power-house and
guard rooms took up most iT the rest of the space, but there were two
rooms For Goebbels ifoimcrK b\ Morel!) and two for Stump-

feggen Brandfs successor as llUlcFs surgeon. Frau Goebbels, who
insisted on reinaiiKng wUh her husband, together with her five childien,
occupied four looms on the lloor above, where the kitchen, servants’*

^ Kail Koiki /A? kiz^e Monai f VUanliuin, 1949), page 3! --his diaiy cntiy foi
23 April.

716

THE LMFEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

quarters and dining-hall were also to be found. Other shelters had been
built near-by. One housed Bormann, his staff and the various Service
officers; another Mohnke, (he S.S. commandant of the Chancellery,
and his staff.

The physical atmosphere of the bunker smis oppressive, but this was
nothing compared to the pressure of the psychological atmosphere.
The incessant air-raids, the knowledge that the Russians v\ere now in the
city, nervous exhaustion, fear and despair produced a tension bordering
on hysteria, vhich was heightened by propinquity to a man wtcKc
changes of mood were not only unpredictable but affected the lues of all
those m the shelter.

Hitler had been living m the bunker for some time. Such sleep as he
got in the last month appears to have been bciween cieht and eleven
o'clock HI the moriiiiig. As soon as the mid-morning air allucks began,
Hiller got up and dressed. He had a horror of being caught either lying
down or undressed.

Much of the time was still taken up with conferences. The midday or
afternoon conference was matched by a second after mainiglil which
sometimes lasted till dawn. The evening meal was served between 9 and
10 p.in , and Hiller liked to drag it out in order not to be !cfi alone
during a night air-raid. Sometimes he would receive Ins sccielaiies at
six in the morning, after a late-night conference. He w'oald make an
cflort to stand up and greet them, but rapidly sank back exhausted iui lo
the sofa. The early-morning meal was the one he most enjoyed, and he
would cat greedily of chocolate and cakes, playing with Blisiidi and the
puppies which she produced in March. To one of tliese puppies Hitler
gave his own old nickname, Wolf, and brought it up witluHit anyone’s
help. He would lie with it on his lap, stroking it ami repeating its name
until the meal was over and he tried to get voine sleep

Between 20 and 24 April a coihidcrable number o( I Inlcfs entourain*

including Gocring; Hitler's adjutant, Svhauh; and Morcll -Heft feu'
the south. In the last week of his life Hitler shaicd the cramped accom-
modation of the iTiehrerbunker with Ina Braun; the Ck‘ebbeK and then
children; Sliimpfegger, his surgeon; his valet, lleuv lingc; and his
S.S. adjutant, Giicnsche; his two remaining secretaries, ITaii ('hrisiian
and Fiau Junge: f liulcin Man/ialy, his vegetarian cimk, and Goebbds'
adjutant. Frequent visitors to the I'uehrcrbunkei from Foe iieighbtmring
shelters weie Bormann; General Krebs, who had sueececied Giiderian
as the Army's Chief of Stalf; Geneial Burgdoif, llilier's chief iiiilitary
adjutant; Artur ikxiiiaim, the leader of the Hiller Youth la thousand ol

717

WAR-LORD, 1 939-1945

whom took part in the defence of Berlin), and a crowd of aides-de-camp,
adjutants, liaison officers and S S, guards.

On Monday, 25 April baung at last come to a decision, Hitler was
in a calmer fiamc of iiiind. Keitel who talked to him m the afternoon,
reports that he appeared rested and e\en satisfied with the position^
This was borne out by his reception of Speer, who flew back from
Hamburg to say farewell and made a full confession of the steps he had
taken to thwart HitlerT orders for scorching the German earth. Hitler
undoubted!} had a genuine aflection for Speer, but it is surprising that
he wus mo\ed, riither than incensed, by his frankness. Speer was
neither anested nor shot, but allowed to go fiee, and like everyone else
who saw Hitlei that day he was impressed by the change in him, the
serenity wliich he appeared to ha\e reached after months of des-
perate effort to maintain his conwction, in the face of all the facts, that
the war conid sti!! be won. Now that he had abandoned the attempt to
flog himwdf and those around him into keeping up the pretence he was
more philosophical and resigned to facing death as a release from the
difllciikies which o\'erv\helmcd him. He repeated to Speer what he had
told Jod! and Keitel the city before, that he would shoot himself in the
bunker and lia\e his body burned to avoid its falling into the hands of the
enemy. This was stated quietly and firmly, as a matter no longer open
to discussion.

While it is true, however, that Hitler never varied this decision, his
moods remaiiiCil as unstable as ever, anger rapidly succeeding to resig-
nation, and in turn yielding to the brief rcvical of hope. This is well
illustrated by ike incident of Goenngs dismissal, of w^hich Speer was
also a witness befoie he left the bunker for good in the early hours of the
24tli.

Wiicn Gociing flew to the south he left behind as his representative
General Koller, iiie Chief of Stall of the Air Force. On 23 April Koller
appeared at I tic Ohersal/herg and reported the decisions of the fateful
conference in the biinkei the day before. Believing that Hitler had
abandtmed the direction of the war, and interpreting literally his remark
that “’if It conics to negotiating the Rcichsmarslial can do better than I
can A Goeiing as%onied tluit he was now the Fuehrer's successor, as he
had been dcMgnated bv the dec:ec of June, 1941. He wirelessed to Hitler
for conOrnialion. The message, sent on the evening of 23 April, read as
follows :

^ kilters intcrroiaition at Nuremberg, 10 October, 1945.

7i8

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

My Fuehrer,

In view of your decision to remain at your post in the fortress of Berlin,
do you agi'ec that I lake over, at once, the total leadership of the Reich,
with full fieedom of action at home and abroad, as your deputy, in
accordance with your decree of 29 June, 1941 ? If no reply is received by
ten o’clock tonight I shall take it for granted that you have loa your
freedom of action, and shall consider the conditions of >our decree as
fulfilled, and shall act for the best interests of oui country and our people.
You know what i feel for you in the gravest hour of iny life. Words iail me tu
express myself. May God protect you, and speed you quickly hire in spile
of all

Your Itiyal

Herawim Ci* denot’d

When Gocring’s message reached the bunker it did not lake ioiie for
Bormann, Gocring's sworn enemy, to repiesent it as an uhimalum.
Speer, who was present, reports that Hitler became unusiialiy excited,
denouncing Gocring as corrupt, a failure and a drug addict, but adding:
'‘He can negotiate the capitulation all the same. It does not iiiailcr any-
way who does

The addition is revealing. Hitler w'as clearly angry at CJuering\
presumption— the habits of tyranny are not easily broken he agiced tu
Bormann's suggestion that Goenng should be anested for higli treason,
and he authorized his dismissal fiom all fiis offices, iiu hiding the
succession— yet 'it does not matter anyway." As Speer pomled out at
Nuremberg, al! Hitler’s contempt for the German people was cuiifaincd
m the off-hand way in which he made this remark.

To try to make too much sense out of what Hiller said or ordered in
those final days w'ould be wholly to misread both the extiaordiimry
circumstances and his state of mind. Those who saw !iini at tii!» time and
who were not so infected by the atmosphere of the bunker as to share fih
mood regarded him as closer than ever to that sfiadirwy line winch
divides the world of the sane fiom that of the insane. He spoke ciitirciy
on the impulse of the moment, and moods ofciimparative lucidity, such
as that in which Speer had talked to him on the 23rd, were inter >perseil
with wild accusations, wilder hopes and haif-cra/ed rambhiigs.

Hitler found it more difficult than ever to reah/c the situation outside
the shelter, or to grasp that this was the end. (kmfcrcnccN continued
until the moining of the day on which lie conimillcd suicide, and as
late as the evening of the 29th Hitler was demanding news of Cieiieral

Quoted by Iresor-Ropcr. page 145.

^ SpecT’s evidence at Nurcinberf, N,F„ part X\ If, page

719

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Weiick's Army which lie had ordered to relieve Berlin.^ On the 24th he
sent an urgent summons for Colonel General Ritter von Greim, m
command of Air Fleet 6, to fly from Munich to Berlin. Gremi made the
hazardous journey into the heart of the capital, with the help of a young
woman test-pilot, Hanna Reitsch, at the cost of a severe wound m his
foot. To get theie they had to fly at the level of the tree-tops, in the face
of heavy A. A. fire and constant fighter attacks which cost the escorting
planes considerable losses. Wlien Grcim arrived it was to find that
Hitler had insisted on this simply in order to inform him personally
that he was promoting him to be Commandei-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe
111 succession to Goermg, an appointment that he could perfectly well
have made by telegram. The only result of Hitlefs action was to im-
prison the new Comniander-in-Chief m the bunker for three days and
to ciipplc hiBi With a wounded foot.

The scene when Hitler greeted Grcim and Hanna Reitsch was marked
by the theatricality of Hillehs behaviour. Hanna Reitsch describes the
tears in his eyes as he leferred to Goenng’s treachery:

His head sagged, his face was deathly pallid, and the uncontrolled
shaking of his hands made the message (from Gocring) flutter wildly as he
handed it to Gicim.

The Fuehrer’s face lemamed deathly earnest as Greim read. Then eveiy
muscle in it began to twitch and his breath came in explosive puffs; only
w'lth effort did he gam sutTicient contiol to shout. '‘An ultimatum! A crass
ultimatum^ Now nothing remains. Nothing is spared to me. No allegiances
aie kept, no honour lived up to, no disappointments that I have not had,
no betrayals that I have not experienced — and now this above ail else.
Nothing icmains. Cvci> wrong has already been done me.”-

Later iIkU night Hitler sent for Hanna Reitsch and gave her a vial of
poison. “Hanna, you belong to those who will die with me. Each of us

^ Siioitly before oiidiiigfU on the 29[li Jod! received a peremptory telegram at his
headquarters
'Unfoim me immediately:

(II Where are WtiKk s speai heads?

12) When are they going to attack‘d
(3) Where is the Ninth Army*’

f4| In which dilation is the Ninth Army breaking through
15) V^herc arc Holste’s spcaiheacU^

, Adolf Hitler”

Joachim Schult/ Die leteten Jd fa 'c, -iiu Jeni Kneg),ta^ebiich des 0 K W. (Stuttgart,
19511, page 51. ^ ^ »

Hanna Reitschh intcnogation by the L S. Army, H October, 1945, N D 3,734~PS.
f'idiifem Reitsch has since repudiated parts of this mtctrogation The American
authorities, however, have confirmed it^ substcintial accuracy as a record of what
she said m Oelo!?er, 1945. O Tievor-Ropet Introduction to 2nd edition, pages
\l\ii-liv

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

has a viaf of poison such as this. I do not wish that one of us falK into
the hands of the Russians alive, nor do 1 wish our bodies to be found
by themf' At the end of a highly emotional interview Hitler reassured
her: ''But, my Hanna, I still have hope. The army of Genera! Weiick
is mo\ing up from the south. He must and will drhc the Russians back
long enough to save our people. Then we \^iil fall back to hold ogainA^

Hitler’s resentment found expression in constant accysatnms of
treachery, winch were echoed by Goebbcis and the otheis. Hanna
Reitsch describes E\a Braun as '‘raving about all the iingratcfu! swine
who had deserted their Fuehrer and should be destio^ed, II appeared
that tlie only good Germans were those who were Ciiiight in tlie bunker
and that all the others traitors because the> were ncT Iheie to die

with him,”" E\a regarded her own fate with cquanimU), She liaii no
desire to survive Hitler, and spent much ofher lime chaLyim; lier clotfics
and caring for her appearance in order to keep up his spuits. Her
perpetual complaint was: "Povir, poiw Adolf, deserted by e\er}onin
betiaycd by all. Belter that ten thousand otheis die tlian that he shciukl
be lost to Germany.”"

On the night of the 26th the Russians began to stiell the C lianadleiy,
and the bunker shook as the massive masoni> spin and crashed into the
coiiityard and gaidcn. Resistance could scarcely List iniith longer. The
Russians were now less than a mile away, and the Anns wliicli had once
goose-stepped before Hitlefs arrogant ga/e on the Wenceslas Squaic
of Plague, through the rums of Warsaw, and down the Cliarnps Elvsces,
was reduced to a handful of exhausted companies lightirii! desperately
street by street for the barely recogiii/af)fe cenlre of Berlin.

The climax came on the night of Saturday Sunday, 28
Between nine and ten o’clock on the Saturday evening ilillei was
to Ritter von Greim when a mc>sagc was sen! in it) Inm wfiali delei-
mmed him lo end at last the c ueer which haii bcinin iwcn!y-w\en yeai
bciure, at the end of another lost war. Bunight by lleio/ Loren/, an
ofliciai oftlie Fiopaganda Mimstiy, it esmsi'^ted t>fa brief Reutei icporl
lo the eiicct that Hiinmler liad been m touch with the Swedish Count
BcrnadoUc for the purpose of negotiating peace ternii.

' N l>., i,734-ILS.

I if \

ihid.

721

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

VII

Since the beginning of 1945 Himmler had been secretly urged by Walter
Scliellenberg, the youngest of his S.S. generals, to open negotiations with
the Western Powers on his own initiative, and when Count Bernadette
visited Berlin m February to discuss the release of Norwegian and
Danish prisoners on behalf of the Swedish Red Cross, Schellenberg
arranged for Himmler to meet him in the hope that this might provide
the opportunity he sought. At that stage the reluctant Rekhsfuehrer
SS., much troubled by his lo>a!ty to Hitler, had been unwilling to
commit himself. E\en when Bernadette paid a second visit to Berlin in
April Himmler could not make up his mind to speak out. But the
dramatic scene at the conference of 22 April and Hitler’s declaration
that the war was lost, and that he would seek death in the rums of Berlin,
made much the same impression on Himmler that it had made on
Goenng. Both men concluded that loyalty to Hitler was no longer
inconsistent uilh independent steps to end the war, but while Goering
telegraphed to Hitler for confirmation of his view, Himmler more
wisely acted in secret.

On the night of 23-24 April, while Hitler was raging at the disloyalty
of Goenng, Himmler accompanied Schellenberg to Liibeck for another
meeting with Count Bernadotte at the Swedish Consulate. This time
Himmler was prepared to put his cards on the table. Hitler, he told
Bernadotte, was quite possibly dead; if not, he certainly would be m the
next few da}S.

In the Situation that has now arisen [Himmler continued] I consider my
iiands free. I admit that Germany is defeated. In order to save as great a
part of Germany as possible from a Russian invasion I am willing to
capitulate on the Western Front in order to enable the Western Allies to
advance rapidly towards the east. But I am not prepared to capitulate on
the Eastern Frontd

On condition that Norway and Denmark were included in the
surrender Bernadotte agreed to forward a proposal on Himmler’s lines
through the Swedish Foreign Minister, although he warned the two
Germans that he did not belie\e there was the least chance that Britain
and the U S.A. would agree to a separate peace.

While Bernadotte left for Stockholm, Himmler began to think of
the ministers he would appoint to his Government when he assumed
^ Count Folic Bcioadottc* The Cuitam Falls (N.Y., 1945), pages 106-13.

722

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

power, and to discuss with Schellenberg the new Parly of National
Union which was to take the place of the Nazi Party,

On 27 April, however, Bernadotte returned from the north with the
news that the Western Allies refused to consider a separate peace and
insisted on unconditional surrender. This was a heavy blow, especially
to Schellenberg, But worse was to follow: on the 2Htli the tact that
Himmler had been taking part in such negotiations w'as reported from
London and New York. Himmler was now to discover, as Goering had
before him, that it was unwise to discount Hitler before lie was really
dead.

Hitler was beside himself at the news. Goering had at least a%kcd
permission first before beginnmgnegotiations; HimmkTjnviio^ e Io}a!iy
he had placed unlimited faith, had usaid nothing. That Hiiamlcr shoiikl
betray him was the bitterest blow of all, and it served to cr\s:a!li/c the
decision to commit suicide which Hitler had threatened on the 22n<i,
but winch he had not yet made up his mind to put into died. This linul
decision followed the pattern of all the others: a period of liesiiation,
then a sudden resolution from winch he wns not to be moved. So it
had been before the decision to stay in Berlin; and so it had been in the
succeeding week over the question of suicide. Throughout the week
Hitler spoke constantly of taking his own life, and on the night of the
27th — if Hanna ReitschN report is to be believed— he held a conference
at which the plans for a mass suicide were careful!) rehearsed and
everyone made little speeches swearing allegiance to the Fuehrer and
Germany. But still he waited and hoped— untii the night of the 2<Si!n
That was the night of decisions.

Shortly after he received the news from Loren/, IlitkT disappeared
behind closed doors with Ciocbbcls and Borniann, tlu* iiiily two Nazi
leaders in whom he now felt any confidence. Hillerk lir^t thought was
revenge, and Bormann had at least the satisfaction of remcwiiig Himmler
as well as Goering befoie the Third Reich crumbled into dust.

Himmleris representative with the Ihiehrer, Fcgclcin, had already
been arrested after it had been discovered that he had slipped quietly
out of the bunker with the apparent intention of making a discreet escape
before the end. The fact that he was married to f \a Braunk sister,
Gretl, was no protection. He was now subjected to a dose exaniiiiatioii
on what he knew of llimmleris treasonable negotiations and then
taken into the courtyard of the Chancellery to be shot. HiiiifiikT was
more difficult to reach, but Hitler ordered Grcim and Hanna Reilsdi to
make an attempt to get out of Berlin by plane and enstrusicii them with
the order to arrest Himmler at all costs. “A traitor must never succeed me

723

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

as Fuehrer,” Hitler shouted in a trembling voice. “You must go out to
insure that he will not.”^

(

Greim and Hanna Reitsch left between midnight and 1 a.m. on the
morning of Sunday, 29 April, and Hitler now turned to more personal
matters. One human being at least had remained true and she should
have her reward. Now that he had decided to end his life, the argument
he had always used against marriage — that it would interfere with his
career — no longer earned weight. So, between 1 a.m and 3 a.m. on the
29th, Hitler married Eva Braun. The ceremony, performed according
to civil law, was hurriedly carried out by one of Goebbels’ staff, a Gau
Inspector, Walter Wagner, then serving in the Volksstunn, who was
brought into the shelter for the purpose. The Fuehrer’s marriage took
place in the map-room which was used for small conferences. Goebbels
and Bormann were present as witnesses and signed the register after the
bride and bridegroom. Eva began to write her maiden name of Braun,
but struck out the initial B and corrected her signature to “Eva Hitler,
nee Braun.” Afterwards the bridal party returned to their private suite,
where a few friends — Bormann, Goebbels and his wife. Hitler’s tw'o
secretaiies, his adjutants and his cook — came in to drink champagne
and to talk nostalgically of the old days and Goebbels’ marriage at
which Hitter had been one of the witnesses before they came to power.

The celebration went on while Hitler retired to the adjoining room
With his secretary, Frau Junge. There, in the early hours of 29 April, he
dictated his will and his political testament. Both documents are of
such interest as to justify quotation at length."

Facing death and the destruction of the regime he had created, this
man who had e.vacted the sacrifice of millions of lives rather than admit
defeat was still recognizably the old Hitler. From first to last there is
not a word of regret, nor a suggestion of remorse. The fault is that of
others, above ail that of the Jews, for even now the old hatred is un-
appeased. Word for word. Hitler’s final address to the German nation
could be taken from almost any of his early speeches of the 1920s or from
the pages of Mem Kampj. Twenty-odd years had changed and taught
him nothing. His mind remained as tightly closed as it had been on the
day when ho wrote: "During these years in Vienna a view of life and a
definite outlook on the world took shape in my mind. These became the
granite basis of my conduct. Since then I have extended that foundation
very little, 1 have changed nothing in it.”-*

‘ Hanna Rcitwh’s interrogation, N D. 3,734-PS

- The two documents are contained m N.D 3,569-PS. ’ Mem Kampf, page 32

724

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

The first part of the Political Testament consists of a general defence
of his career:

More than thirty years have now passed since in 1914 I made my modest
contribution as a volunteer in the Fiist World War, which was forced upon
the Reich.

In these three decades I have been actuated solely by love and loyalty to
my people. . . .

ft IS untrue that I, or anyone else in Germany, wanted the war in 1939.
It was desired and instigated solely by those international staiesmen who
were either of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests, f have made
too many offers for the control and limitation of armaments, w hich posienty
will not for all time be able to disregard, for the responsibility for the out-
break of this war to be laid on me. I have further ncvci wished that, after
the fatal First World War, a second against England or against America,
should break out. Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns
and monuments hatred will grow against those finally responsible foi cver>*
thing, International Jewry, and its helpers. , . .

I have also made it plain that, if the nations of Europe aie again to lx
regarded as mere shares to be bought and sold by those mtci national coiv
spirators in money and finance, then that race, Jewi)', which is the real
cuminal of this muiderous struggle, will be saddled v\jtn the rcspoiiSi»
biiity. . . .

Hitler then turned to defend his decision to stay in Beihn and to
speak of the future.

After six years of war, which in spite of all scl-backs will go down one da} in
histoiy as the most glorious and valiant demonstration eff a natiorfs life-
pm pose, I cannot forsake the city which is the capital of the Rtitii . , , I
have decided, therefore, to remain in Beilin and there of my own ftce will
to choose death at the moment when I believe the position of Euchier and
Chancellor can no longer be held. . . .

I die with a happy hcai t aware of the immeasuiablc deeds id' our soldkis
at the front. . . . That from the bottom of my heait I expnws my tiianks to
you all IS just as self-evident as my wish that you should, because of that,
on no account give up the struggle, but lather continue it against the enemies
of the Fatheiiand. . . . From the sacrifice ofoui soldieis and from my own
unity with them unto death will spring up in the history of Germanv the
seed of a radiant renaissance of the National Socialist movement and thus
of the realization of a tiue community of nations. . . .

... I beg the heads of the Aimy, Navy and Air Foicc to strenglhcn by
all possible means the spirit of icsistance of our Si^ldieis in the National
Socialist sense, with special lefcience to the fact that I myself, as founder
and creator of this movement, have prefened death to umardly abdication
or even capitulation.

725

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

To this Hitler could not refrain from adding a gibe at the Officer
Corps:

May It at some future time become part of the code of honour of the
German officer— as it already is in the case of our Navy — that the surrender
of a district or of a town should be impossible and that the leaders should
march ahead as shimng examples faithfully fulflliing their duty unto death.

The second part of the Testament contains Hitler’s provisions for the
succession. He began by expelling Goering and Himmler from the
Party and from all offices of State. He accused them of causing im-
measurable harm to Germany by unauthorized negotiations with the
enemy and of illegally attempting to seize power for themselves. As his
successor he appointed Admiral Doenitz President of the Reich,
Minister of War, and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces — and
promptly proceeded to nominate his Government for him. Goebbels and
Bormann had their reward, the first as the new Chancellor, the second as
Party Minister. Hitler’s choice for Foreign Minister was Seyss-Inquart,
once a key figure in the annexation of Austria and since 1940 Reich
Commissioner for the Netherlands. Himmler’s successor as Reichs-
fuehrer S S. was Hanke, the Gauleiter of Lower Silesia, and, as Minister
of the Interior, Paul Giesler, the Gauleiter of Upper Bavaria. The influ-
ence of Bormann is evident in the appointment of Party Gauleiters to
both posts. Ley, Funk and Schwenn-Krosigk kept their offices; Speer
was replaced by Saur, his chief assistant at the Ministry for Armaments;
while the last Commander-in-Chicf of the German Army was Field-
Marshal Schoerner, who commanded the undefeated Army Group in
Bohemia.

The last paragraph returned once more to the earliest of Hitler’s ob-
sessions; “Above all I charge the leaders of the nation and those under
them to scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless
opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.”

The Testament was signed at four o’clock in the morning of Sunday,
29 April, and witnessed by Goebbels and Bormann for the Party, by
Burgdorf and Krebs as representatives of the Army. At the same time
Hitler signed his will, which was again witnessed by Goebbels and
Bormann, with the additional signature of Colonel von Below, his
Luftwaffe adjutant This was a shorter and more personal document:
AUliougli i did not consider that 1 could take the lesponsibility during the
years of struggle of contracting a marriage, I have now decided, before the
end of ray life, to take as my wife the woman who, after many years of
faithful friendship, of her own free will entered this town, when it was
already besieged, in order to share my fate. At her own desire she goes to
726

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

death with me as my wife. This will compensate ns for what we have both
lost through my work m the service of my people.

What I possess belongs — m so far as it has any value— to the Party, or, if
this no longer exists, to the State. Should the State too be dcsfioyed, no
further decision on my part is necessary.

My pictures, m the collection which I have bought in the course tif years,
have never been collected for private purposes, but only for the esiahlisli-
ment of a gallery in my home-town of Linz on the Danube.

It is my heartfelt wish that this bequest should be duly executed.

As my executor I nominate my most faithful Part) comrade, JVIarlin
Bormann. He is given full legal authority to make all decisions. He is per-
mitted to hand to my relatives anything which has a sentimental \aliic or is
necessary for the maintenance of a modest standaid of life kkinvn

biiergerilchen Lebens''); especially for my wife's mother and nw fuilhlul
fellow-workers W'ho are well known to him. The chief of these arc m> former
secretaries, Frau Winter, etc., who have foi many years helped nic In' Iheir
work.

I myself and my wife choose to die in order to escape the disgiace of
deposition or capitulation. It is our wish to be burned immediately in the
place where I have carried out the greater part of my daib work in the
course of my twelve years’ service to my people.

Hitler’s choice of Doenitz as his successor is surprising, and to no one
did It come as more of a surprise than to Doenitz himself. Since Doenitz
had replaced Raeder as Commander-in-Chief, however, Hitler had
come to look upon the Navy with different eyes, He aitached the
greatest importance to the U-boat campaign, and contrasted the
‘“National Socialist spirit” of the Navy under Doenitz with what he
regarded as the treachery and disaffection of the Army and Air Force.
In the last year of his life Hitler showL*d more confidence in Doenitz
than in any of his senior commanders, and this was lepaid by an
unquestioning loyalty on the AdmiraFs part. With Gocriiigaiid Himmler
excluded, Goebbels was the obvious choice as llillerA successor, but
Goebbels would never have been accepted by the soldiers. To command
the Armed Forces— which, in effect, meant to ncgoliaie a suricndcr”
someone else, preferably a serving officer, must become head the Stale
and Minister for War. Goebbels was thus to succeed Hitler as Churicch
lor, but Doenitz was to become head of the State and Supreme Vonh
mander. By choosing an officer from the Navy, rather than from the
Army, Hitler offered a last deliberate insult to the mdiiai} ciisic on wlioiii
he laid the blame for losing the war.

Hitler knew very well that the war was lost, but, as the political
testament shows, he was making a clumsy attempt to save sonietliing

727

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

for the future. As a legacy to a new generation of National Socialists,
however, it was a singularly unimpressive document. The game was
played out and when the prestige of power was stripped away nothing
remained but the stale and unconvincing slogans of the beer-hail
agitator of the 1920s.

Characteristically, Hitler’s last message to the German people con-
tained at least one striking lie. His death was anything but a hero’s end;
by committing suicide he deliberately abandoned his responsibilities
and took a way out which m earlier years he had strongly condemned
as a coward’s. The words m the Testament are carefully chosen to
conceal this; he speaks of his “unity with our soldiers unto death,” and
again of fulfilling his duty unto death. It is worth noting that when
General Weidling, the Commandant of Berlin, discovered that Hitler
had committed suicide shortly after refusing the garrison permission to
fight its way out of the city, he was so disgusted that he at once released
his soldiers from their oaths. None the less the fiction was maintained in
the official announcement, and Doenitz, m his broadcast of 1 May,
declared that the Fuehrer had died fighting at the head of his troops.

After he liad finished dictating the two documents Hitler tried to get
some rest. Goebbcls too retired, but not to sleep. Instead, he sat down to
compose his own last contribution to the Nazi legend, an “Appendix
to the Fuehrer’s Political Testament.”

Foi days Goebbels had been talking m extravagant terms of winning a
place in history. “Gentlemen,” he told a conference at the Piopaganda
Ministry on 17 Apiil, “in a bundled years’ time they will be showing a
fine colour film describing the terrible days we are living through.
Don’t you want to play a part in that film? . . Hold out now, so that a
hundred years hence the audience does not hoot and whistle when you
appear on the screen Goebbels’ genius as a propagandist did not
deseit him. Despite Hitler’s order, he declined to leave his leader’s side
and finished Ins apologia \vith the promise “to end a life which will have
no further \alue to me if I cannot spend it m the service of the
Fuehrer ”

111 the course ol Sunday, the 29th, arrangements were made to send
copies of the Fuehrer’s Pohticai Testament out of the bunker, and three
men were selected to make their way as best they could to Admiral
Dcenilz’s and Field-Marshal Schoerner’s headquarters. One of the men
selected was an official of tlie Piopaganda Ministry, and to him Goebbels
entrusted Ins own appendix to Hitler’s manifesto. At midnight on 29

^ Semmier, page 194.

728

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTIII S

April another messenger. Colonel von Below, left carr>iiig with him a
postscript which Hitler insti acted him to delivei to Genera! KeifcL ft
was the Supreme Commandei's last message to the Kiiiicd Tokes, and
the sting was m the tail.

The people and the Armed Foices have given their all in tfik fong and haul
struggle. The saciifice has been enormous. But my tiust has been nu a ed
by many people. Dislovalty and betrayal have Lindeini rjd iCMOanee
throughout the war. Itwas therefore not gsanted tome to lead the people
victory. The Army General Staff cannot be con /pa red with lUc (fcneral Sinl
of the Fust World Wai. Its achievements vveic iai b'Vmd t* ol the
fighting fiont.^

The war had been begun by the Jews, it had been kfO b\ 1<e .

In neither case was the responsibility Hitler's and iv last a ‘uiofallua
to reaffirm his original purpose:

The efforts and saciificc of the Gcimaii people in tins i addciil hav.
been so great that I cannot believe thev have Ken iii vaui. iii; i Ut
still be to win teintoiy in the cast for the Gcimaii penpleo

vni

During the 29lh, while the messengers were setting out fr»)m I'le himkcr,
the news arrived of Mussolini’s end. The Duce, loo, hud shated his fate
with his mistiess; together with Claia fVtacci, he had been by the

Partisans and shot on the shore of Lake Cornu on 2K ApiiL I hcii bodies
weie taken to Milan and hung in the Pia//.ilc lorcto. If iliilci mule
any comment on the end of his brother dictator il u unfeauded: bill
the news can only have confirmed him in the dctidim he had lakeii
about Ills own end. Even when dead he was deieriiiiiicil noi to be pul
on show.

He now began to make systematic preparaliO!i\ foi taking his hfc.
He had his Alsatian bitch, Biondi, destroyed, and in the eaiiv lioarN t^f
Monday, 30 April, assembled his staff in the passage in oukr to say
farewell. Walking along the line, he shook each man and woinao sileiifly
by the hand. Shortly afterwaids Boimann sent out a leie^uaiii In Docnit/,
whose headquarters was at Ploen, between Liibeck and Kesk iiisii iictmi!
him to proceed ‘'at once and mercilessly" uiMinst at! liailnis.

^The original text oi the message has been destroyed the vejaon q lacd von
1 econsti ucted b> Colonel von and is ‘nven by 1 levc^r-Ropc: p u’c 214.

- ibid.

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

On the morning of the 30th Hitler was given the latest reports on the
situation in Berlin at the usual conference. The Russians had occupied
the Tiergarten and reached the Potsdamer Platz, only a block or two
away from the Chancellery. Hitler received the news without excitement,
and took lunch at two o’clock m the afternoon in the company of his
two secretaries and his cook. Eva Hitler remained in her room and Hitler
behaved as if nothing unusual were happening.

In the course of the early afternoon Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur,
was ordered to send two hundred litres of petrol to the Chancellery
Garden. It was carried over in jerricans and its delivery supervised by
Heinz Linge, Hiller’s batman.

Meanwhile, having finished his lunch, Hitler went to fetch his wife
from her room, and for the second time they said farewell to Goebbels,
Bormann and the others who remained m the bunker. Hitler then re-
turned to the Fuehrer’s suite with Eva and closed the door. A few
minutes passed while those outside stood waiting in the passage. Then
a single shot rang out.

After a brief pause the little group outside opened the door. Hitler
was lying on the sofa, which was soaked in blood: he had shot himself
through the mouth. On his right-hand side lay Eva Braun, also dead:
she had swallowed poison. The time was half past three on the afternoon
of Monday, 30 April, 1945, ten days after Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday.

Hitler’s instructions for the disposal of their bodies had been explicit,
and they were carried out to the letter. Hitler’s own body, wrapped in a
blanket, was carried out and up to the garden by two S.S. men. The head
was concealed, but the black trousers and black shoes which he wore
with his uniform jacket hung down beneath the covering. Eva’s body
was picked up by Bormann, who handed it to Kempka. They made
their way up the stairs and out into the open air, accompanied by
Goebbels, Guensche and Burgdorf. The doors leading into the garden
had been locked and the bodies were laid in a shallow depression of
sandy soil close to the porch. Picking up the five cans of petrol, one after
another, Guensche, Hiller’s S.S. adjutant, poured the contents over the
two corpses and set fire to them with a Iiglited rag.

A sheet of flame leapt up, and the watchers withdrew to the shelter of
the porch. A hca\y Russian bombardment was in progress and sheOs
continually burst on the Chancellery. Silently they stood to attention,
and for the last time gave the Hitler salute; then turned and disappeared
into the shelter.

Outside, in the deserted garden, the two bodies burned steadily side

730

THE EMPEROR WITHOUT HIS CLOTHES

by side. It was twelve years and three months to the day since Hitler had
walked out of the President’s room, Chancellor of the German Reich.^

The rest of the story is briefly told. Bormann at once informed Doenitz
by radio that Hitler had nominated him as his successor, but he
concealed the fact of Hitler’s death for another twenty-four hours.
During the interval, on the night of 30 April, Goebbels and Bormann
made an unsuccessful effort to negotiate with the Russians. The Russian
reply was “unconditional surrender.” Then, but only then, Bormann
sent a further cable to Doemtz, reporting Hitler’s death. The news was
broadcast on the evening of 1 May to the solemn setting of music from
Wagner and Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony: the impression left was that
of a hero’s death, fighting to the last against Bolshevism.

An attempt at a mass escape by the men and women crowded into the
network of bunkers round the Chancellery was made on the night of
1-2 May, and a considerable number succeeded in making their way out
of Berlin. Among them was Martin Bormann^ whether he was killed at
the time or got away has never been established. Goebbels did not join
them. On the evening of 1 May, after giving poison to his children,
Goebbels shot his wife and himself in the Chancellery Garden. The
bodies were set fire to by Goebbels’ adjutant, but the job was badly done,
and the charred remains were found next day by the Russians. After
Goebbels’ death the Fuelirerbunker was set on fire.

In the following week Doemtz attempted to negotiate terms of
surrender with the Western Allies, but their reply was uncompromising.
The German Army m Italy had already capitulated and the British and

^ What happened to the ashes of the two burned bodies left in the Clmnccllefy
Garden has never been discovered. That they were disposed of in some way remains
a possibility, since an open fire will not normally destroy the human body so com-
pletely as to leave no traces, and nothing was found in the garden after its capture
by the Russians, Mr. Trevor-Roper, who earned out a thotough investigation in
1945 of the circumstances surrounding Hitler’s death, inclines to the view that the
ashes were collected into a box and handed to Artur Axmann, the leader of the Hiller
Youth. There is some slight evidence for this and, as Mr. Trevor-Roper points out
(in the Introduction to his second edition, pages xxxii-xxxiv ), it would have tveen
a logical act to pass on the sacred relics to the next generation, Ihe siriipIcNt ex-
planation may still be the correct one It is not known how thorough a search has
been made by the Russians, and it is possible that the remains of Adolf I Iitier and Ins
wife became mixed up with those of other bodies which have been found there,
especially as the garden continued to be under bombardment until the Russians
captured the Chancellery on 2 May.

The question would scarcely be of interest had the failure to discover the remams
not been used to throw doubt on the fact of Hitler’s death, ft is, ol course, true that
no final incontrovertible evidence m the form of Hitler’s dead body has been pro-
duced But the weight of circumstantial evidence set out in Mr. Trcvoi-Ropei’s book,
when added to the state of Hitler’s health at the time and the psychological probahifiiy
that this was the end he would choose, make a sufficiently strong case to convince all
but the constitutionally incredulous— oi those who have not bothered to stuily the
evidence.

731

WAR-LORD, 1939-1945

Americans refused to be drawn by Doenitz's clumsy efforts to secure a
separate peace and split the Grand Alliance. On 4 May Admiral von
Friedebiirg signed an armistice providing for the suriender of the
German forces in Norlh-uest Europe, and early on the morning of the
7lh Genera! Jodi and Fnedeburgputtheirsignaturesioan unconditional
su! render of all the German forces presented to them jointly by the
rcprescntati\es of the U.S.A , Great Britain, the U.S.S.R. and France at
Rheims.

The Third Reich had outlasted its founder by just one week.

732

EPILOGUE

In this age of Unenlightened Despotism Hitler has had more
than a few rivals, yet he remains, so far, the most remarkable of those
who have used modern techniques to apply the classic formulas of
tyranny.

Before the war it was common to hear Hitler described as the ]\mn
of the sinister interests who held real power in Germany, of the Junkers
or the Army, of heavy industry or high finance. This view dt)es not
survive examination of the evidence. Hitler acknowledged no masters,
and by 1938 at least he exercised arbitrary rule over Germany to a
degree rarely, if ever, equalled in a modern industrialized State.

At the same time, from the re-militarization of the Rhineland to the
invasion of Russia he won a series of successes m diplomacy and war
which established an hegemony over the continent of Europe com-
parable with that of Napoleon at the height of his fame. While these
could not have been won without a people and an Army willing to serve
him, it was Hitler who provided the indispensable leadership, the fiair
for grasping opportunities, the boldness in using them. In retrospect his
mistakes appear obvious, and it is easy to be complacent about the
inevitability of his defeat; but it took the combined efforts of the three
most powerful nations in the world to break his hold on Europe.

Luck and the disunity of his opponents will account for much of
Hitler’s success— as it will of Napoleon’s—but not for ail. He began
with few advantages, a man without a name and without support other
than that which he acquired for himself, not even a citizen of the country
he aspired to rule. To achieve w'hat he did Hitler needed — and possessed
—talents out of the ordinary which m sum amounted to political genius,
howwer evil its friuls.

His abilities have been sufficiently described m the preceding pages:
his mastery of the irrational factors m politics, his insight into the
weaknesses of his opponents, his gift for simplification, his sense of
timing, his willingness to take risks. An opportunist entirely without

735

I l>iLOC/I L

principle, he showed considerable enu a lency and an astonishing power
of will in pursuing his aims. Cvinca! and calculating in the exploitation
of his liistnoiiic gilts, he retained an unshalsen belief in his historic role
and in himself as a creature of dcsiinv.

The fact that Ins career ended in lailuie, and that Ins defeat was pre-
eminently due to Ills own aiidaLcs, docs not by ilscif detract from
Hitler’s claim to gieatmws I he Oaw lies deeper. For these remarkable
powers were eomhincd with an ugl> and slndcnt egotism, a moral and
iiitcllecliial crelinism. The pmsions which ruled Hitler’s mind were
ignoble hatred, resentnien!, the lust to dommale, and, where he could
not dominatta to destroy. His career did not exalt but debased the human
condition, and his twehc >cars’ dicditiirship was barren of all ideas
sa\e one—llic further extcrriop of his own pov\er and that of the
nation with wliich he had idcniified hmi^clf. Even po^^er he conceived
of in the cniiiest terms: an endless \ista of military roads, S S. garrisons
and conceiUiatson camp^ stfctching across Europe and Asia.

The great icsuluiions of the pa^t, whatever their ultimate fate, have
been idenlshed with the release of certain powerful ideas: individual
conscience, liberty, equalits, national freedom, social justice. National
Socialism piodifced nothing Haler constantly exalted force over the
power of ideas and delighted to prove that men were governed by
cupidity, fear and their baser passums. The sole theme of the Nazi
resolution was domination, drevwd up as the doctrine of race, and,
failing llial, a \indictive destuictweness, Rausclining’s Revolution des
Nihitismus.

It is this cmptincs>, this lack of anything to justify the suffering he
caused ralher liiaa his own monstrous and imgovernabie will which
makes Hitler bi*l!i st) repellent and so barren a figure Hiller wail have
lus place in hnlory, but it w ill be alunywidc Attiki the Hun, the barbarian
king who was sunvimed, not ""ih: Gieal,*’ but ’“the Scourge of God,”
and who boasted ‘in a viyuigf ’ Gibbon writes, ^worthy oFhis ferocious
pride, lhai liic eras^ ue\er gse^, on the spot wheic his home had stood

The \mw has niten hcc i expre^ ‘Cd iiiat Hiller coukl only have come
to power in Germany, end i is irue wahoat failiiig into the same
error ot racnhsiii C'. the \i/i> ih.it tiicre were certain features of
German histoiicaJ quite ap.ut from dm eficcts of the

Dvfcal and the i)eprcssion, whidi fasoiued the rise cU’such a movement.

Ihis IS 11131 U) accuse ihc (leimaiw of Oiiginai Sin, or to ignore the
other sides i)!*Geinian life which were oidy grossly caricatured by the
^ (jibOon IXiiifn u’ f Ji iff the RoJian Lnipue, chapter WXiV.

73o

EPILOGUE

Nazis. But Nazism was not some terrible accident which fell upon the
German people out of a blue sky. It was rooted in their history, and
while it IS true that a majority of the German people never voted for
Hitler, it is also true that thirteen milliom did. Both facts need to be
remembered.

From this point of view Hitler’s career may be described as a reductm
ad absurdum of the most powerful political tradition in Geriiiany since
the Unification. This is what nationalism, militaiism, authoritarianism,
the worship of success and force, the exaltation of the Slate and real*
politik lead to, if they are projected to their logical conclusion.

There are Germans who will reject such a view. They argue that \Hial
was wrong with Hitler was that he lacked the necessary ski!!, that he
was a bungler. If only he had listened to the generals-"ur Schacht
or the career diplomats— if only he had not attacked Russia, and so on.
There is some point, they feel, at which he went wrong. The} refuse to
see that it was the ends themselves, not simply the means, which were
wrong: the pursuit of unlimited power, the scorn for justice or any
restraint on power; the exaltation of will o\er leason and conscience;
the assertion of an arrogant supremacy, the contempt for others’ rights.
As at least one German historian, Professor Memccke, has recogm/ed,
the catastrophe to which Hitler led Germany points to the need to
re-examine the aims as well as the methods of German pi^Hcy as far
back as Bismarck.

The Germans, however, were not the only people who preferred iii
the 1930 s not to know what was happening and refused lo cal! c\il
things by their true names. The Biitish and French ai Munich; the
Italians, Germany’s partners in the Pact of Steel; the Poles, who stabbed
the Czechs in the back over Teschen; the Rus*>ians, who signed the
Nazi-Soviet Pact to partition Poland, all thoiighi they could buy
Hitler off, or use him to their own selfish advanugc. Ihey did not
succeed, any more than the German Right or the German Army. In the
bitterness of war and occupation they were forced lo learn the Iriilh of
the words of John Donne which Ernest Hemingway set at I lie bcgniiiiiig
of ins novel of the Spanish CimI War:

No man is an Hand, mine of it sdfe; e\er> man is a pceccotf ilu* ( oii-
tineiit, a part of the maine; If a clod bee washed away b\ tin* Sea. I mope
IS tile lesse, as well jf a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy
friends oi of thine uwm were; Any maiPs death dimimsh.w me. hccall^c 1 am
involved in Mankinde; And therefoic neser send lo know tor whom the
bell tolls; It toils for thee.

Hitler, indeed, was a European, no less than a Gerniiiii pheiiomeium.

737

FFILOGUi:

The conditions and the state of mind which he exploited^ the malaise of
which he was the symptom^ were not confined to one country, although
they were more strongly marked in Germany than anywhere else.
Hitlef s idiom was German, hut the thoughts and emotions to which he
gave expression have a more universal currency.

Hitler recognized this relationship with Europe perfectly clearly.
He was in revolt against “the System” not just in Germany but in
Europe, against that liberal bourgeois order, symbolized for him in
the Vienna which had once rejected him. To destroy this was his mission,
the mission in which he never ceased to believe; and m this, the most
deeply felt of his purposes, he did not fail. Europe may rise again, but
the old Europe of the years between 1789, the year of the French
Revolution, and 1939, the year of Hitler’s War, has gone for ever — and
the last figure in its history is that of Adolf Hiller, the architect of its
ruin. "\Si mommentum requins, circumspice^'—''lf you seek his monu-
ment, look aroimd.”

738

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The FOLLOWING LIST OF books makes no pretence to he a complete
bibliography for a history of the Third Reich, even less for a history of Ger-
many or of international relations during these years, ft consists, in the first
place, of notes on sources, and m the second place of a list of those kook^
which have proved useful in preparing this work.

For the fullest bibliographies so far available on German) and National
Socialism the reader should consult Norman H. Baynes feditj: f/r Spmhes
of Adolf Hitler, and the separate parts of the Catalogue of the Wiener Lthiai),
London.

The bibliography is divided into five parts:

L Nazi Sources.

II, Documentary Material

III. Memoirs and Diaries.

IV. Secondary Works.

V. Articles.

1. NAZI SOURCES

A, Writings and Speeches of Adolf Hitler:

(!) Mein Kampf (English translation by James Murphyi Hurst and
Blackett, London, 1939.

(2) Adolf Hitlers Reden, edited by Dr. Ernst Bocppic. Deulsdicr Volks*

veriag, Munich, 1934.

(3) Die Reden des Fuehrers nach der Mavhtuhernahmi\ Elicr, Berlin, EH9.

(4) The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922 1939, edited by Norman If. Ed} ms,

2 vois. Oxford University Press, 1942.

(5) My New Order (Hitlefs Speeches, 1922 19411 edited In Count Raoiil

de Roussy de Sales. Reynal Sc Hitchcock, New '^’ork, H4!.

(6) HitlcFs Words (Speeches, 1922-'I943), edited by Cioriirwi W. Piange.

American Council on Foieign Affairs, Washington, 1944.

(7) Hitlers Tischgesprdche im Fuehrerhauptquartier, 194! !942, edited by

Dr. Henry Picker. Athenaum Veriag, Bonn, 1951.

For the later wartime speeches I have used the B.B.C, Monitoniif, Report.

B. Speeches and Articles by the other Party Leadens:

(1) Joseph Goebbels, Kampf um Berlin, Eher, Munich, 1933,

*— Revolution der Deutsehen, Stalling, Oldenburg, 1933.

— Goebbels sprkht. Reden aits Kampf imd Sieg, Ibid, 1933.

719

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Joseph Goebbels, Der Angriff Aufiat:e aiis der Kampfzeit. Eher,
Munich, 1935.

Weiterleuchten, Ibid., 1939.

(2) Hermann Goeriiig, Reden und Aiif sat ze. Ibid., 1938.

— — - Germany Reborn, Elkm Matthews, London, 1934.

(3) Rudolph Hess, Reden (2nd edn.). Ehcr, Munich, 1938.

(4) Alfred Rosenberg, Blni and Ehn\ Reden u. Aufsdtze von 1919-1933, Ehcr,

Munich, 1939.

(5) Gregor Strasser, Kamp/ um Deutschland, Eher, Munich, 1932.

C. Ideological Wofkr

(1) R. W. Darre, Um Blut imd Baden, Eher, Munich, 1940.

(2) Gottfried Feder, Das Programm der N,S.D,A,P, mid seine weiianschau-

lichen Grimdgedcnken, Eher, Munich, 1932, (English translation,
Allen & Unwin, London, 1934).

(3) Heinrich Himmler, Die S.S, als antiholschewtische Kampforganisation,

Eher, Munich, 1936.

(4) Alfred Rosenberg, Das Parteiprogi cman. Wesen, Gnmdsatze imd Ziele der

N,S,D,A,P. Eher, Munich, 1930.

— Der Myihiis dcs 20 Jahthimderis. Hobeneichen Verlag, Munich, 1930.
— Die Protokolle der Helsen von Zwn imd die judische Weltpolitik,
Deutschcr Volksvcrlag, Munich, 1923.

D. Nazi Piopaganda:

It would be tiresome to list the hundreds of pamphlets and other forms of
propaganda poured out by the Paity. Some acquaintance with this literature,
however, is essential to an understanding of National Socialism. References
will be found in Baynes and in the catalogue of the Wiener Library, which
has the best collection of the material available in Great Britain — down
to Hoffmann’s volumes of photographs and the senes of cigarette-cards.
Equally valuable are the Na/i newspapers, of which the two most important
are the Vdlkischer Beobachtei and Der Angi iff,

E. Nazi Collections of Documents and Historical Accounts

(1) Dokumente der deutschen Pohtik, \ol, I, 1933 (and for subsequent years

down to 1940). Junkci und Diinnhaupi. Berlin, 1 935-1 943.

(2) Gcrd Ruble, Das Dntte Reich, Die Kampfjahre 1918-1932, Humnicl-

verLig, Berlin, 1933, n.d.

Dntte Ruck, Dus eisif^ John 1933 and for subsequent years

down to 1938. Hummefverlag, Beibn.

(3) Johann son Leers, Kurzgefusste Geschuhte des \iiti(K:ai Soziaiismus,

Vdhagen u, RIasmg, Bielefeld, 1^33.

I4| Hans Vol/, Daiendei Geschuhte dci S,S,D, i,P. Ploet/, Bcdm, 1939.

II. DOCUMi:\T\RY MATLRIVL

A. Fo! the whole period.

By fai the most impoitant coiiection of documents is that prepared for use
m the Nuremberg Trials of !945-19i6. The complete version of the pro-
740

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ceedings of the trial and the full text of the documents presented in evidence
have been published as :

The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the Internatmm! Military
Tribunal, Proceedings, Vols. I-XXiil; Nurembeig, 1947-1949, Docwmmis
in Evidence, vols. XXiV-XLii; Nuremberg, 1947-1949.

Translations of most of the documents used by the British and American
Prosecuting Counsel, together with translations of certain of the defence
documents and of the most important affidavits and intenogatioos, have Ixen
Published by the United States Government Printing Oifice under the title
Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, 8 vols. + 2 supplementaiy volumes, A and
Washington, 1946-1948.

A verbatim record of the trial proceedings has been published by H.M.SX).
The Trial of German Major War Criminals, 22 parts; London, 1946* 1950*

All three publications retain the document numbers used at the Trial, aiu!
the same system of reference has been used in this book.

For subsequent trials: Das Urteil im Wilhcjmstrassen-Prnzess, edited bv
R. W. M. Kenipner and Carl Haenscl, Alfons Burger, Muiiich, 1950. Law
Reports of Trials of War Criminals, vols. LXV, ILM.S.O. for Ci.N. War
Crimes Commission, London, 1947-1949.

1 have also made use of Documents on Internatmm! Affairs, tor 1928 193H,
13 vols. Oxford University Press foi R.l.LA., 1929-1943.

B. For the period up to August, 1934:

(1) WiUe und Macht 5 (1937). Heft 17 contains a number ofdcxiimcnis for

the events of 8-9 November, 1923,

(2) Der Hitler Process, the recoid of the Court PriKcedings m Munich in

1924. Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich, 1924,

(3) Hitler und Kahr, Aus dem Untersucfmngsausu'hms ik\ ha^tLselmi Lmul'

tags. Landesausschuss der S.P.D. in Bayern, Munich, I92K.

(4) Hitlers Ausemandersvtzung mit Bruning, Eher, Munich, 1932.

(5) ProtokoU der mimdlkhen VerhamUimg m dem Entmizifizkrimgwrfuhren

gegen den Generalleutnant a. d. Osiar von Himkmhurg, ar Ucl/cn, 14
March, 1949.

(6) The Reichstag Fire Trial, The Second Bnnrn Book id the Hitki rerM\

John Lane, London, 1934.

(7) Wembudi kber die Erschiessimgen des 30 Juni, 19 U, Lditions du C ane-

four, Pans, 1934.

(8) Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919 1939, edited by L\ L. Wood-

ward and Rohan Butler. 2nd Series, voK, I-IV. If.M.S.O., London,
1946-1950, For the reports of the British Embassy in Iknliii,

C. Fot the period

(1) Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945; Senes D, \oJs, f IV.

H.M.S.O., London, 1949-1951.

(2) Documents on British Foreign Pohev 1919 1939; 3rd Senes. VoK. MV.

London, 1949-1950.

(3) Ckmo's Diplomatic Papas, edited by Malcolm Miiggeridge, OdhaniN,

London, 1948.

(4) Hitler e Mimohni—Letteie e documenti, Riz/oli, Milan, 1946.

74!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(5) Les Lett res Semites echangees par Hitler et MassolmL Editions du Pavois,

Pans, 1946.

(6j Documents and Materfah Relating to the Eve of the Second World Wan
Vol. I, November^ 1937-1938, VoL H, The Dirksen Papers, 1938-
1939 , Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1948.

17) German Foreign Office Documents. Turkey, Foreign Languages Publish-
ing House, Moscow, 1948.

— ^ — Hungary, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1948.

(8) Documents Concerning Get man- Polish Relations and the Outbreak of

HostiiiUes between Great Britain and Germany. H.M.S.O,, London,

1939, Cmd. 6106.

(9) The Ft ench Yellow Book. Diplomatic Documents, 1938-1939. Hutchinson,

London, 1939.

( ! 0) Official Documents concerning Polish German and Polish -Soviet Relations,
1933 1939. The Polish White Book. Hutchinson, London, 1939.
(II) Polmsehe Dokiimcnie zur Vorgeschichte des Krieges. Gei man F.O.,
Berlin, 1940: translation. New York, 1940.

(12| Documents on the Events preceding the Outbreak of War. The Second
German White Book. German Library of Information, New York,

1940.

(13) Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941. From the Archives of the German

Fmeigfi Office, Department of State, Washington, 1948.

(14) Die Beziehimgen znischen Deutschland und der Sowjet Union 1939-1941,

edited by Alfred Seidl. H. Laupp’sche, Tubingen, 1949.

(15) Documents on International AJJatrs, 1939-1946, voLI, March-September,

1939. Oxford University Press, for RJ.l.A., 1951.

(16) Le Proces da Matechal Petain, 2 vols. Aibin Michel, Paris, 1945.

(17) Petain et ies Aiiemamls. Memorandum d'Abetz. Gaucher, Pans, 1948.

(18) The Spanish Government and the /l.xcp. Department of State, Washington,

1946.

(!9j The Fuehrer Conferences on Naval AJJaus, reprinted in Brassey's Naval
Annual for 1948.

(20) Hitlet Directs hh War, edited b> Felix Gilbert. Oxford University Press,
New Yoik, 1951. Records of Hitler's military conferences.

III. MEMOIRS AND DIARIES
A. For the period up to August, 1934:

(1) Balthasar Brandina>cr, Mcldeganger Hitler. Waiter, Uberlingen, 1933.

(2) Otto Braun, Von Weimar zu Haler. Huropa Verlag, New York, 1940.

(3) Heiniich Bruening, tm Brief, published m Deutsche Rundschau, July,

1947.

(4) Rudolf Diels, Lucifer Ante l\>rtas. Ztuschen Seurmg mid Heydrkh.

interverlag, Zurich, 1949.

(5| Otto Dietnch, MU Haler in die Macht, Chur, Munich, 1934.

(6) Anton Drexler, Mem pohtnches Envachen. Deutscher Volksverlag,

Munich, !923.

(7) Th, Ducsterberg, Der Stahiheim mid Hitler. Wolfeiibutteler Verlags-

aiistalt, 1949.

742

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(8) Bella Fromm, Blood and Banquets. Bles, London, 1943.

(9) H. B. Gisevius, To the Bitter End. Cape, London, 1948.

(10) Joseph Goebbels, My Fart in Germany's fight. Hurst and Blackett,

London, 1935.

(11) Joseph Greiner, Das Ende des Hitier-Mvthov. AmalChca Verlag, Vienna,

1947.

(12) Albert C. Grzesinski, Inside Germany, Dutton, New York, 1939.

(13) Hans Kallenbach, Mit Adolf Hitler auf FesUmg Landsba^, Parcus,

Munich, 1933.

(14) Kurt Liidccke, I knew Hitler, Jarrolds, London, 1938.

(15) General Ench Ludendorff, Auf dem Wcit zur feidheirfikaik, i.iiden-

dorffs Verlag, Munich, 1937,

(16) Otto Meissner, Stmtssekretdr unter Ebert-Hmdenhurg-Hitkr, Hoffmann

u. Campc, Hamburg, 1950.

(17) Hans Mend, Adolf Hitler Im feldc. Ehcr, Munich, I93L

(18) Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, Thornton Butterv^orfh, London,

1939.

(19) Ernst Roehm, Die Mcmoirvn des Stahehejs Roehm, Uranus Veriag,

Saarbrucken, 1934, ongmally published io 1928 under Ihc wle:
Die Geschkhte eines Hochverraters,

(20) Rosenberg's Memoirs, edited by Serge Lang and Lrnsf \on Sthcnck.

Ziff Davis, New li'ork, 1949.

(21) Hjalmar Schacht, Account Settled, Wcidcnfcld and Nicolson, London,

1948.

(22) Hans Schlaogc-Schoeningen, The Morning After, Giilfaiic/, London,

1948.

(23) Carl Severing, Mein Lebensweg, vol, II. Im Auf imd Ah ikr RepuhLii,

Greven, Kdin, 1950.

(24) Martin H, Sommerfeldt, leh war Dabel, Drei Qoellen Verlag, Darm-

stadt, 1949.

(25) Otto Strasser, Hitler ami L Cape, Lcuulon, 1940.

(26) “• — - Mimstersessei oder Resolution? Kanipf Vcrlag, Beilin,

(27) Fritz Thyssen, I Paid Hitler, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1941.

(28) Volkischer Beobachter, Special numhci <4' 8 NovcnikT, 1933, containing

reminiscences of 8 Nosemkr, 1923, by RoscnlxTg, Llncli Graf,
Weiss, Rochm and Rossbach.

(29) Fncdeiint! Wagner, The Royal lamily of Bayreutk L>ic and SpoUis-

woodc, London, 1948.

B, for the period 19M 1945:

(1) The accounts of Gisevms, Meissner, Schacht, Rosenberg and I ricticlind

Wagnc! already cited.

(2) Dino Aifien, Deux Dietateurs Fate d fme, Rome Ikriin I9,?9 !94S,

C'htnal A lie. Genes a, l94tS.

(3) Admiial k. Assmann, fkutuiie Schu ksaisuihre, Broclfwus, Wic^hadco,

(4) Fiilk Bernadolte, The Curiam rails, Knopf, Nev\ York, 1 94k

(5) S, Fayiie Best, The lenio hmdent, Hutchinson, Lc^ndun, FHi).

(6) Gerhard Boldt, in the Shelter with Hitki, iilUilci Picss, I oihIoii, 1948.

743

BIBI KiORAPHY

(7) Georges Bonnet, Defense de !a Pan, 2 ^oK Cheva! Aile, Genc\a, 1946-
!94S.

C8) Winston S. Churchill, The Snami Wodd IVm, voh. I~-V. Cassell, London,
i94S~1952.

|9| Cimio's Dimy, 1937 193^, Methuen, London, 1952.

(10) Clam's Diary, 1939 1943. Hemcmann, London, 1947.

(11) Robert (bulondre, De Staiuie d fUdet 1936 1939. Hachette, Pans,

1950.

(12) B, Dahlerus, The Imm Animpi. Hutchmsem, London, 1948.

(13) Vicomte j. Da\sgnon, Berlin 1936-1940. Sainemrs dOme Mission.

Editions Uri!\c!sita!!cs, Par^s, 1951.

(14) Herbert von Dirksen, Moskau- fakio- London, Kohlhammer VerJag,

Stuttgart, 1949.

(15) Amhtissa(hr D(M\s Diar}. I9J3 1938. Gollancz, London, 1941.

(I6j P. E. Flandni, Fidituine Inn^aLsi, 1919-1940 Editions Nouveiles,
Paris, 1948.

(17) A. Francois- Poncet, The Lot Aid Years, Gollancz, London, 1949.

(18) G. Gafciicii, Dermeis JtHirs de VEwope. EglolT, Fans, 1946.

(19) General M. G. Gamelm, Serxir, 3 \ols. Plon, Pans, 1946-1947.

(20) G. E. R. Gedyc, B alien Baste f ns. Gollancz, London, 1939.

(21) Gcyr von Schweppenbuig, Lrinnaim^cn eines MiUtdrattaches, London

1933 /9i7. Deutschei Veilagsanstalt, Stuttgart, 1949.

(22) The Goehbeis Dianes, edited by Louis P, Lochner. Hamisb Hamilton,

London, 1949,

(23) Gespraehe nnt llennatm edited by Werner Bros. Christian

Wolff, Elensburg, 1950.

(24) General Heinz Guderian, Pan:er Leader, Michael Joseph, London,

1952.

(25) General Franz Haider, Haler as Watloul, Putnam, London, 1950.

(26) Gespniche mit Hakien edited by Peter Bor. Limes Vcriag, Wiesbaden,

1950.

(27j The Von Hassell Diaru s, 1938 1944, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1948,

(28) Si! Nevilc Heiiderson, ladnn o/ a Mission, Hodder and Stoughton,

London, 1940.

(29) General Adolf Hciisingci, Befchl un Uiderstrelt. Rainer Wunderlich

Vcriag, I'ubiiigen, 1950.

(30) Fncdnch Hossliach, Ahiuhen Uihrmatht wul Hitler. Wolfenbutteler

\'cfLigsanstait, 1949.

131) Peter Klcist, /him hen Hirar nrJ Maha, Pl<9 1945. ‘VthenaanvVeiiag,
Bonn, 1950.

(32) General Ivarl koller, Det I *ye MentJ, Norbert Wohlgemuth Verbg,
Mannheim, 1949.

(34) Erich Ivordi, IVmn und U uAnJi/a//, Laion Deutsche Verlag, Stuttgart,

1947.

(35) — \ichi am dtn Akun. L moii Deutsche \ eilag, Stuttgail, 1950.

(36) K. W. Krause, ZihnJune kuhimeuiunei bei Hidei Hermann Laatzen,

Hamburg, n, d.

(37) A Gciman of the Resistance, The Last Letters oj Count Helmuth James von

Moiike, Oxford University Press. 1946,

744

BIBLIOGRAPHY

138) Benito MussoIinL MenuHrs, 1942 1943, edited hy R* Klihanlsy* Wciden-

fe!d and Nlcolson, London, 1949.

(39) Lion'S^ U^VAgresHion Aikmande cimtre la Poh 4 nt\ I iiiiiimariOri, Paris.

1945.

(40| R. Fechel, Deuiu'her Wklentcmd, Rentsch, Zuricl\ 1947.

(41 1 G. Ward Price, / A7 wk These Dktatofs, Hanap, Lteidon, 1937.

(42) R, Ralin, Ruhehses Lehen, Dicdcrxhs Verlag, Du^sekiorL 1949.

(43) Otto Remcr, 20JidR 1944, Vcrlag I)eutsche Opposition, llanibiiip. I95L

(44) Pad! Resnaud, La trance a same TLurape^ 2 voK. Fliniinarion, Paris

1947.

(45) F. \on SchlabrendorfF, I<e\oii Aijaimt Hitler, £>rc and Spottiswoode,

London, 194K.

(46) Paul Sihmidt, Statist aiif diplimiatlu her ihtime /WL? RH5. A.tliei aurn*

Vcilag, Bonn, 1949.

(47) Joachim SchalU, Die leicten 30 Tage - -Ah\ dem kruyMa hiu k i!v\ O. A Jl „

Stcinprubcii Vcilag, Stiiltgait, 1951.

(48) Kurt von Schuschojgg, rarewell Austria, C assell, la^ndon, I93H.

Amman Requiem, Gollanc/, Londiin, 1947.

(49) Schwerin von Krosigk, Ls qeMhah m Deutuhiami, Rainct, Wundcrlicii

Vei lag, Tubingen, 1951.

(50) Rudolf Semralcr, Goehhels, the Man \e\t m Hitler. I orufoii,

1947.

(51) William Shirci, A Berlin Diary, ilannsh Hamilton, I imuius I94L

(52) L. Siiiioni, Berimo— Amhiuciata dltaha 19J'*‘ 194 J. MiglwiCM, Ronit,

1946.

(53) General Hans Speidel, IVe Defended Siumamiv. hnkms, Londum 195 L

(54) E. R. von Siarhemberg, Ik tv, an Hniet ami Mmsuimi. Iltukicf and

Stoughton, London, 1942,

(55) R. Seirano Suficr, Lntre ks Pvrena \ et (nhraiiar. i hc\ai AJe, ijene\ii,

1947.

(56) The Meimus oj Limt urn Ueiesuiker. Ouilai.v/, I I95l.

(57) Sumner Wdks, A Time fm Densum. Harpers, New \oik, I9‘I4.

(58) Gencial Ssegtried U’c^^tphal, Ihe beumn At mi tu the Ue\t. ( as%ed,

London, I95L

(59) Michael Winch, Republic Ufr a Dux, Hale, Lomion, 1939.

(60) G. Zeinatto, Die Wuhhiit uher (kstanuh. LopgmuA. London,

( 61 ) A. Zoiicr (odd, Ihtkr Prhat. Diustc \cflar, Du^'-cldoif, 1949.

iV. SLC’ONDARY WORKS

A. Interna! Hisuny of (seummv ami the Sazi Patn^ 191 K I '45,

Hhtmy af (nr man } , 1 9 ! 8- 1 9 ^4.

(1) Arnold RiccliX, Pnkde te Sdeme, Oviord Ljiivcisit) Ihc^s, New "lork,

1944.

(2) R.XC'laik, 1 he I all id the itenmm Repiibhe. Allen and Ihm in, London,

1935.

(3) Oswald Dutch, Ihe 1 fnmt Diplomat. Ihei.deof Dun: um PupuL Xinold,

London, 1940.

I ij /

745

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(4) Ossip K. Fleclitheim, Die K,P,D, m der Weimarer Repubhk. Bollwerk-

Vcrlag Karl Drott, Offenbach, 1948,

(5) Jean Francois, UAffabe Rdhm-Hitkn (Second Edition.) Gallimard,

Paris, 1939.

(6) Lindiey Fraser, Germanv Between Tno IVnrs. Oxford University Press,

1944,

(7) E, J. Giimbcl, Vier Jahre poUtischet Murd, Verlag der neuen Ge^^ell-

schaft, Bcilin, 1922.

(8) S. Wilham Halperin, Getmany Died Democracy. Crowcli, New York,

1946.

(9) Konrad Heiden, A Ilntory of National Soemhsm, Methuen, London,

1934.

(10) Hitler der Eroberer, Die Entlarvimg emer Legcnde, ion einem deutschen

Politiker. Malik Verlag, Prague, 1933.

(11) Arniin Mohicr, Die Komervaiivc Revolution in Deutschland, 1918-1932.

I Lcdiicli Voivverk, Stutlgait, 1950.

(12) E. A. Mowrer, Germany Fats the Clack Back. (Revised edition). Penguin

Books, London, 1938.

(13) Arthur Roscnbcig, Hbtorv of the German Republic. Methuen, London,

1936.

(14) Godfrey Schtcic, The IVeimar RepuNic. Faber, London, 1946.

(15) Edgar V. Schm:dt-Pauli, Geschuhte der Frcikorps, 1918-1924. Scliiamm,

Stultgarl, 1936.

(16) Bernhard Schwertfeger, Rahel um Deutschland. Carl Winter, Heidelberg,

1948.

(17) J. W. Wheelcr-Bennctt, lUndenlnirg, The Wooden Titan. Macmillan,

London, 1936.

Hitler

(18) Konrad Hcidcn, Haler. Constable, London, 1936.

|I9| _ Der Fuehrer. Go! lane/, London, 1944.

(20) Heinz A. Heinz, Gormanyks Hitkr. Hurst and Blackett, London, 1934.

(21) Emil Lcngycl, Hitla. Routiedge, London, 1933.

ill) Rudolf Olden, Hitkr the Parou Gollanc/, London, 1936.

(23) Ludwig Wagner, Man of Stnfe. Nos ton and Co., New Yoik, 1942.

The Other haa Loader.

(24) Fwan Butlci and Goidon Vojng, Marshal Ihiheut Glory . liodder and

Stoughton, Loudon, 1951.

(25) W. Fiisdiaucr, Goefing. UilL'm*., London. 1951.

(26) Hcimann Raiisclinuig, Maker:, of L>!C and Spoltiswoodc,

London, 1942.

(27) J. R« Rees (cdj, Ike (use of RoJdf H vv. Heineniann, London, 1947,

(28) Curt Riess, ioAcp/i Gf ( MiIl fftdhsanu (Liter, London, 1949.

(29) W, Stephan, Jo eph boorbth. Duimm einer Dktatur. Union Deutsche

Veilag, Stuttgart, 1949.

The Thud Rack

(30) R. A^;"B*^ad}, The Spaa mJ Stiuctiuc of Geimtm Fnsasm. Gollancz,

LolTdon, 1937.

(31) Jean Delucrs, Lc 7) o/e .o Pouh. \ndre MarWl, Pans, 1950.

746

BIBl lOGRAPHY

(32) E. Kegon, !)er SS. StaaL Kail Alber, Munich, m6.

133) S. IL Robeits, r/k> iLnise that Hitler Built. Methuen, Lun/on, 1937,

(34) F, L, Schumann, The Nazi Dictaun.ship. (Second IJnhmj Kuopio Sew

York, 1936.

fiYJimmc Hi it or y of Qennanv

(35) Ch'iiies Beltcllieim, UEamomle AUemunde %*im ie Sazisme. RRjeie,

Pans, 1946.

(36) W. F. Biuck, Sochi ami Ecommne History oi Cnmmn, /AW

Universia of Wales, CaidU\ 193S.

(37) C. W. Guiileisiiid, The nitmuiue Recovery of (scmmur to

March, I9JS. Macmillan, Icr.oji, 1939.

|38) C. R. S. Ikii 1 , CenUiUy^ foriczn hidd^itdoe^ , inktd Foivci^jf^
Press, 1935.

(39) W. Arlliiir Lewis, Eamimnc Suney, 1919 i9t9, Alkn and I awm,
London, 1949.

140) Otto Nathan, The Xai laYeohuc Swtem, Duke Um'-ersUv \
Duihum, Norih Candiua, i94-L

(41) Fran/ Neoniano, Bekvoanih iioWower, Loiidn*i, |94.\

(42) Giistav Stuipcr, isennaa Iconeoo, !H7i) i94(h Alien and liiiwlo,

Loudon, 1940.

The German Armr

(43) Jacques Bciioist-Mechio, Ht.sUnre Je VAvtuee AiLmande 1919 I9j6, 2

vok Alhin Mwliel, Pann i9LS.

(44) W. Foerster, £w Genend kanyjt yegen dai kreiy, Mihiiiicncr-Dom

Veilag, 1949. Based on Cjcneral Beck's papeis,

(45) Waller Goilit/, Dcr ifeuLuiie GihcraRmiu Veilag der Frankfurter

Htfie, 1951).

(46) Graf Kidmansegg, Der Fritsvh Piozess, i9SH, lloifniao u, C ampe,

Hamburg, 1949.

(47J Frcidrich von Ralxmau, Seeckt, 4us Seinem Lehen, /9/..V 1956. Hiot
U. Kochici, Lvip/ig, 1940.

The German OppoMiften

(48) K. IL Absliiigcn, Gmuius. Union Deutsche Verlag, Stullfait, 1949.

(49) !im( olvsn, Ghai i>f !nieihv,eihe. Ciolkiuc/, London, I95L

(50| A. W. Dulles, Gcifnands Vtuk'iynmnd, Macmillan, Ne\\ Yoik, 1917.

(51) A. S. Duncan Jones, The Struyyle for h jous ai iunnumv.

Gullanc/, London, 1938.

(52) Nathaniel Mscklem, \ai omd Soaahsm and i9e Romim (dilkihe (7;a/t/i.

Oxfoii! Univcisifs Pass, 1939.

(53) M. Mouriii, Compiots e min* Hitler^ DLlS 1945, FavoL 1948.

(54| Hans RothfeK, 7/in German Oppesiiun to Ihinr,

Hiosdaie, Illinou, 1948,’

The Dulil the !oj 4 Reuk

(55) WUPci I udoe Ncoonh, /< s Ikihutv Jours da Troisuhne Rekh, Bciger-

IcsMuh, Pain, PLo.

(56) M. A. Minniainio. Tin ihss to Du\ Petci London, I95L

(57) IL lU lYc\m'!(opew The Last Duvh of ihihr, iScauid iditlon.i

Maciiylian, London, 19*^0.

747

BIBLIOGR-^PHY

Interpretations of National Socialism

(58) H. G. Baynes, Germany Possessed. Cape, London, 1941.

(59) Kurt BlClcher von Wahistatt, Know Your Getmans. Chapman and Hall,

London, 195L

(60) Rohan Butler, The Roots of National Socialism. Faber, London, 1941.

(61) Friedrich Meinecke, Die deiitsche Katastrophe. Eberhard Brockhaus,

Wiesbaden, 1947.

(62) Hermann Rauschniiig, Germanfs Revolution of Destruction. Heine-

mann, London, 1939.

(63) "Edmond Vermeil, Doctrinaires do la Revolution Allemande, 1919-1938,

Fernand Soiiot, Pans, 1939.

The huremberg Trials

(64) Peter Calvocoressi, Nuremberg. Chatto and Windus, London, 1947,

(65) R, W. Cooper, The Nuremberg Tiial. Penguin Books, London, 1947.

(66) G. M. Gilbert, hurembeig Diary, Lyieand Spottiswoode, London, 1948.

B, foreign Fidicy ami the War

(1) Max Beioff, The Fonngn Policy of Soviet Russia, 19294941, 2 vols.

Oxford University Press, 1947-1949.

(2) Julius Braunthal, The Tragedy of .Austria. Gollancz, London, 1948.

(3) E. H. C arr, Gernum-Soniet Relations, 1919 1939. Oxford University

Piess, 1952.

(4) David Daiiin, Soviet Rimms Foreign Policy, I939“1942, Yale University

Pi css, 1942.

(5) Oswald Dutch, Thus Died Austiui. Arnold, London, 1938.

(6) Keith Felling, The Lije of Seville Chamberlain, Macmillan, London,

1946.

(7| M. Fuchs, A Pact with Hitlei. Gollancz, London, 1939.

(8) General J, F. C. Fuller, The Second World Wai. Eyie and Spottiswoode,

London, 1948.

(9) G. Gafencu, Pi elude to the Rusmn Campaign. Mlillei, London, 1945.

(10) Fleiniuth Greiner, Die oherste Wchrmachijuhnmg, 19394943. Limes

Veriag, Wiesbaden, 1951.

(Ilj General A, Gulllaomc, La Guene Germano-So\ieuque, 19414945.
Payot, Pans, 1949.

(12) Joseph C. Har«;ch, Paitein Conquest, Heinemann, London, 1942.

(13) B. H. Liddell Hart, The Otner Side tf the Hill, (Third edition.) Cassell

London, 1951.

(14) Konrad Hcidtn, 0«< Man Agamst Lia ope. Fcngmn Books, London, 1939,

(15) F, H. llinslc}, !hiki4 Suategy. Cambiidge University Press, 1951.

(16) W. L. Langci, Our I uh\ Gamble, Knopf, New YoiL, 1947.

(17) W. L. Langcr and S. I. Gleason, Ine Ckdleiige to Lckition, 1937-

1940. liarpets. New '^oik, 1952

(18) Anthony Martienssen, ilalei aihCHis Aihmrais, Seeker and Waiburg.

London, 1948.

09) Charles A. Micaud, The henui Right and Sazi Geimanv, Duke Umver-
Siiv Press, Durham, North C arolina, 1943.

(20) M. Mouiin, Les Tentatnes de Faix, 1939-1945, Payot, Pans, 1949.

(21) L. B. Namiei, Dipiomatic Prelude. Macmillan, London, 1948.

748

INDJ \

Di*lp, ii : 675.

Dcsrtcfiitic (See German State

Pi!rt\ I

Denniu’'! : !n\a‘U)n tif, 346; propo^^ed
CAUiration of, 52‘^; rtijc\^cd Anti-
C(»iJimtcni Fiif-I, 605'a
Den > n* * D”. I » . T'Vi,

Dcitert, Gco'p, \orr 272.

Deumher kieuif and, tonnded, Pi2'^,
6(1; and kahr and Loesovv,
diealved h> prodama^ori,
tfl the \ia , o di

Roehiii and, 112. oSte /na.r-

Imm.)

IkufM'iwutitmale Pitney Gejn\.,i

N, *1100.2 Fufl),

Ikht^ki'. -luh hKii^ifuHei^Kikt !kii-
1 1 k \ iUii uud \>ThiL ,ii‘i ' ifLi .n / -
/t./lto. louiwlcd I ’HO,

Deit s hudLi Jie //*j ir^phflii

lurntkd IM2^ 7a, a!i..mcc

with, III.

Dkkd p ^

Dicim, Aiiriist* 156
Did! Geh. I d'jeid. 6u2
Dkiitih, CItia 126, I3j, 154, D6, r^,

212, 2"’5, HC
Sipp: 2fr, 276, 6iK. "^il.

Dimitr<27, Cjarfa* 236.

DinidcldtT, Johaiiiiis: 59.

Diruntr, Artiini .117.

DiikH^i, IkiPeit \on. 3Hi.

Diiarn\iii!ent Cbofcreiice, 1933: 171,
!.v6, 2634
Dik, Dr , 343.

Dohmdja: and Bu! nra, Sr A,

Docnitz, Kail. i>p If., 372. obeyed
IL Without qucaion, 727, P 4 g
Ollkcr L-noats, 623; Commaruler-
m-C'hicf, 626, 655; and Italv, 645,
650; uii ewuatiun ta Cute, 655,
and iH>nib*all ak on IL, and
Aimv cut oil m Baltic, 704; m
torrniand of N. German /one. 714;
ard It in Berlin, 715; Pididcnt,
726; siirpif^e at, 727, cvips. i4 If \
poliLcal tCNtamciit sent to, 728;
and death uf IL, 728-31, and
Ru'sia. 731.

Dotifiiieo, Hans \un; 674, n76.

I m;dUrf, ( Kaueikr uf ike
Ainiiiun RepuNn ' 3‘'8-V, ikl, 39K.
Oollwan, I iigeii 6,s2
Die\{er, Anlcii. 3S 67, |17.
Duesterlxtik IhcodiH: 169, 180,

2 D.

Diiil ioopei. Mf A, tlatei Gao.vw/
K^ruk'il 44

Dunkirk, I \ Vvii da i oi sa I
Diiiaiii k>, I euliiiaiio “tlM 441,442.

Last iNroi : and Japan. 43-1

Lhctt, I isedneh, AVaA Id 92,

119.

Lek.,rL D *n,!r 69, 71-2, HO
£den, /?/. /6 , BiiteJi forths

.Sitnl/M m Bcfdn, I91h 26?;
1934, 296; 1935, 303-5, and f luiir
beriain po6c>, 34, a6„ckt\i by ii ,
434

Dt.vpf Hah end, 541, 562. D4. ^"’34,
tjie.O Britain and, 5.4^ Civ;nun\

'nd. s 622.

Ihrl id^ ' 66. 634.

I '.”1. inn ^43
f i*j jn, Plot ’oi{i 702.

f 'n Si

I isctthovcf, C/«'< . I)h *hf . 6 6)7

1 Kurt. 5*^

I! \lan.cm;622 ^ 29 , 6ly
IkiUnib. kn ekxthm, to Kctciilac,
mat} to/, ms . ( o:, faUituai,
/v‘t 6 hi lor hldii' cl.^knih, he
na*he o; 6ik*

1 Iser. (semye I Ixi ‘ piod’ ay.aiid Ii ,

532 - 3 .

1 nabli t/, I d\u fhc, u'c (jCfUiaiiv

i O’ '4!fU60f»
riV'eHufds < o/ 46.

I pp, 1 lan/ X Riiiii von. 56, 6|, I2f/,
246

1 fcnicriko, (ten ’ 629,

1 10 4, Karl; 23% 268, 24, 2 '7.
Ir/ixiiki, \!att!/S.o. ^6, 66, J6, 566.
L‘aer, Hciman ?L!i0 2 IlfiD.

1 'itotua' and i icniuov, 4Mt, and Rys aa,
507, 560; ill Rfi^ o4}iimai! IktJ,
486 iSVoiily; B.dtiL Stairs i
European \ew fiinler, vo New OrJci
I vHTvict men, inoMd id”, 1918: 49, 53.

I sicimmation camps: 6424

f Gen NikoUu:^ von:

529. ttj, 534.
faninaeci Robert 6^2
Iasci4 tfuuid C ouiivil and
241,(47.

Paitv m Hah . lAH
I atkedand I root* 58.
ledei, Inittliiui' >8, nT, 71, IlML HI,
HA 122, i2n, D^-6, |9i m^K
bederai States, mc States' (iovermnents
unJ uiui names t4 Staiis.

Fe’xleio, llcuaan 559, fAo, *'09, 72L
i ell pehti, Ot'A Ir.visoet,

I inkiod: 10 Ru ktot icrriian Fid, 4 9%
Russian mvasam oi. 524 Rysus
Imiissls war, tsiinas and,
V^cskro Posers an i, ^2-s; airmsine
With Russia, 5^0, imnuu and
Ru-'Un mteiest in, 566, sm H,
lanaunv and, 574; .titd iin rion

Jsp

INDEX

of Russia, 588, 595, 597, 610, and
Anti-Commtem Pact, 6Q5n, peace
with Russia, 696,

Fischboek, Dr. . 386.

Fischer, Otto Christian: 156.

Foiced labour in Germany. 637, 646.

Ford, Henry: 76.

Forster, Albert: 476, 708.

France: see also mam heading France
(Vichy).

Army, 304, 471, 512, Navy, 541,
543, 558; Air Force, 558.

Relations with Germany: and Nazi
Party, 76, 130; and Austro-German
Customs Union, 160; and German
rearmament, 187, 262, 264, 294,
296,304-5, 309, 512; Schleichci and,
268; Roehm and, 269; and Ruhr,
80-1, 286; and Amchluss, 298; and
Angio-German Naval Treaty, 309,
and Rhineland, 81, 313, proposed
pact, 314, negotiations with, 335-6,
H. on, 337-8; and Geiman High
Command, 378, and Sudctenland,
407-29 passim, 432-4, frontier de-
daialion with, 435-6, and annexa-
tion of Czechoslovakia, 446-7 ; H
on war with, 469-70, 503, 737, on
Poland, 475, 487, 490, 512-3,
negotiations, 1939, 485, 493, 495-6;
sunender, 538-9, 541, armistice,
541-3; wholly occupied by, 631;
lorced labour fiom, 637 , 1944 cam-
paign in, 690-2, and surrender of
Germany, 732, and Austria 160,
298, and Belgium 334-5, and
Czechosloiakia 298, 300, 398, 402,
407-29 passim, 432, 446-7, 737,
and Gteaf Biitam and Locarno,
302-3, 305; and Anglo-German
Naval Pact, 1935, 309, Hoare-Laval
Pact, 311; and Sudctenland, 407-29
passim, and Poland, 475, 487, 490,
493, 495-6, 512-3; ami Huugmy,
298, md Italy and Hoare-Laval
Pact, 311, and santtions agamst,
318; on Tunisia, Corsica and Nice,
436, 438 Italian attack on, 53S, and
Poland. 297, 300, 315, 332-3, 458,
465, 472, 475, 487, 490, 512-3, and
Rumania 300, ami Rusna pact,
1935, 305, 312-3, 314, 378, 435,
negotiations, 1939, 466, 472, 476,
479, 485, 487, and Spam 319-20,
334, and Yuzadaxia 300

{See also Wes tern Powers a// J Allied
Powers )

rraiice, Allied landings in, see imdet
Normandy

France ('Vich}) and French colonies,
551, 560, and Geimany, 554-5, 556,

578, and de Gaulle, 556, and Italy,
572, 596, 604, and Syria, 587.

Franco, Gen Francisco, Caudillo of
Spam and H., 318, 553, 555-6,
570, 604; and Mussolini, 319, 559;
and German plans m North Africa,
551-9

Franco-German Frontier Declaration,
435-6

Fran^ois-Poncet, Andre: 312, 313, 342,
427, 428, 434.

Frank, Hans Nazi legal authority, 124,
126, 154; defence counsel in Leipzig
Trial, 1930, 148; mission to Rome,
1936, 320-1 , on Nazi constitution,
367; m Poland, 525; on subject
peoples, 634-5, 637, character, 619,
670.

Karl Hermann . 446.

Fiauenfeid, Alfred Edouard. 298

Frederick 11, the Great, King of Prussia
370, 521, 539, 693, 705, 708, 712,
716

Freikoips and the Army, 56, Rochm
and, 60, 84; replaced by Sports
Division of SA. 65; dis-

solved, 250

Freisler, Roland' 687.

Freundeskt eis dei Wirtschaft 156.

Frick, Wilhelm: assistant to Poehner,
57, and May Day Putsch, 1923, 87;
and Nov. Putsch, 1923, 96, 99, tried
with H , 104, Reichstag deputy,
111, 126, 153, 205, first Nazi to
assume State office, 134; importance
m Party, 153-4; and S.A., 198, and

G. Strasser, 212, 216, handled Nazi
negotiations with Schleicher, 216,
Reich Minister of the Interior, 232,
and State governments, 245-6, and
Roehm purge, 268; retired, 665

Fnedeburg, AdmL Flans von. 732.

Fntsch, Gen. Werner Fi^iherr von and

H. , 263, alerted the Army, June,
1934, 274, at H ’s secret meeting on
policy, 1937, 336, 374-5; argued
against war policy, 374-5, 377;
and Nazi Party, 378, accused of
homosexuality, 380-1 ; removed
from office, 375 613.

Fromm, Gen. Fritz. 684.

Ftonthami 113,115 {See also Deutscher
* Kampfbimd)

Fuehrer, question of successor to H. as, .
503, 705, 709, 718-9, 726, 727, 731.

Funds, Party, see iindei Nazi Paity.

Funk, Walther: 154-5, 157, 196, 234,
376, 382, 436, 541, 619, 670, 726.

Gxfencu, Gregoire: 460.

Gas waifaie* prohibition, 307.

756

INDrX

Gaulle, Gen ( Imslts dc: 5^2, 554, 556,
(seWuird, Karl* 10!.

Cicotwi f'umeittiun: GoGuhels and,
607, TIL

(kroiaij Armv, see (jirrmo) Anna!

I « MclS

Geniun-ItJMuG.irjhc c Pa^i iTrspar-
Ittc Pavo: 56L4, 5nT-K, 577,

60S

Cierman-ftaluin Paa P wt of SteeL ■ 406,
436, 4ir-S, 4^M, 524, "37
Gerinan Nanonal Parr*. Hat^nben*
and, 131-2: funUs, ' 131.2,' 1^5.6,
and Na/i P,iri\, 134, 1 6"^, 21 L 223-
4, 231; in c!af\>a^, 1430, 144:
1932, 1%, 209, 1933, 240 ali-.'Ohed,
249

(kmiau Natairui! Si.v:a9a Part’,., uc
Na/i Part\.

(iernaui National SiKialot Wuikeia
PdiL . toundai !9i0, 59
German Officer CTaps see Gernuu>,

a3, 136,

416, 422, 453, 461

Gciman Racial I iccd mp P.aa, see
Deutsch » oik i\ehe / i i ihvi t • pm L i
Gciman-Siocak lreai\ i^otcvtiMiu
1938*446.

Gefman Social WoiL^s' Part\ m
Austiia. l.ScY / Austria )
German Socialist Katj. Strcichei and,
59, and Nafi Faitv, 67, 74 .
Gcrnian-Soeicl Pact, ste Russo-Cjcinian
Pact.

German Sfalc PaG\ f Democrat *»! 76,
137, 156, 230, 249,

Gcimaii Workers’ Party: ST-.s, 59-60,
(jcrn\ir>. m I9is, Si-2, adant*eo, to
Lea, cue t>f Natunis, 119: Rtane-
Bcihn A\is kumed, 3j| an war
on, 627, 655, 65o, fG), uar on
German soil, 692t}, '^unciklcr ol,
732

GiNsiiii undci Na/i ^’otem,
3rr, IGwm/ KoiW'/.iGS, 92, Hs
367, 713, Pieskiui 13 lul, ls9,
241, H. and, 2;sL2, 346, eleaion,
1932, 16S, 173, 175, Ine

LhiMm- Lmi\ 2^0, 241-2, 244-N
367 244 iteuh tu ,

racist groups 111 , HI4; Na/’
dcpuues in, 126, D2, '165,

I9L 296, lleetions tPC.s |?s,
(193111 1*44-5, 164 (PG.N 2u^-9,
1 1 9 33 1 2*10, 1 1 93"^ 1 ^ 1 6, « H 3 M 3u6-" :
Gociine a^ PrcMcLiit G, LA, L 6,
204-5, Bill a^ua-t the I ndau** ant
of the licnuaii People, 112, I avv
for the Piolection oi Uie Rep ib'ic,
150: the InaHinp, Bill in, 2'14-s;

pover . ^*1,511100 to ft.. 244-5, bP-s;
\a/iiiCafsoi: mL 6L3: ILuh \l .ug
23"^- 10, 34K, 2^0, 2<2 Jmk (il\
673. Cmi Sen!(i\ 61s. AdriunMia-
tion, corrfi[ti!cm ii\ 618-9.

Fofouu G*M>iiinNs. Central
(rovemnient s%eak Li2d on States,
66 % omd 2 tK*n, 1923. Nc 91; ctllcf
4 0 of I fjo.h o^^irfdLon n Ruhr,
SK H. on file Repabiic m CKncin-
men', S3, Can 2s yoseriirmrif help-
lev, CioceirjnifntX attitude to
Na/i IL G’*,, !‘^V6L

Som\! D.oeaia CoMarifAs:

5A llvo, 12**.^ 159.H),

j 2A.6 t:N4‘’0‘L"*Mi f4L,6r,
6^6 I a jii» I ,0 d Ln-
tra]tlrpmeia^ st, 5tG2\ Du DR

159 , 169. 178. 21re 2iN 24 2«L
12 ^, 463, ^ 8 IL maupnu, I djoit sf\*,
C63, 690. tm iritcffiL, ^^28 57,
6k\ 695- imlmofU 7% r.0-2, 89.
tioeimp, so charge of the iconomc,
127-8, 366, Vi, "

Ri|o,F\iitAS ^2, 77. .K(cL 441 ^ IG,
127, 130-s, 1(41, nh r\

i73„ lrt7 2f*2, 2M, 2''6,
292 6. 103, 309 VI, 324.

Iv9-i04l ‘tOTo. 4'’0“L 4** h

512, M9D0, out “2*^

\hMH>InF«}s la /ofct sfit*tuuij,
1939, 4/!, iuviam and 521, sP;
attack , 01 Biih.Mi "*46 ta'liue

to dcKPl (^unuin. 6s6 (»66;

dhvCtsiouol ^^I’caetiito, fjom Anip,
6Ht' .m.i WaltcH SS, (LA. f| on,
“”2% 72% tu’h in 1918, 4K, <IV;
tehitu^nslbp 'Aith H , ^7, 86, 102,
279, "03-4, 5D r 'al 4G-'t
Sk, 5r-22, ^34, ‘'7‘-6, DO. mil
fd0-!L 62.,, (AZ-t, ePp,

669, Td^’h “D Av, %3^, TJ'L ,ck|
the Na/. Parts, ""6, 91. 98-9,' |0.\
146-%), k'4A, f4,\ 6>s jj;^|

tile SA. 9.-9, 146-0^ I 'St, 199,
2A-79 pu' or liu: SS, 2S|g
6*^3, hSL i , and t!?c /nuLupu
56, uaht an * in pel t , s GL and
I Ht'-t RoGihu 60, 7h ’’Ci, 83,

9u, I j'h- ,o' >if>\ fd L !?i f!o
Kipp Cmsm '4, oppi‘Hul Hvolu
tuHi, 9| 2, aod ?he Nov , 1923,
/V//uL |lo t’ld lli!!dcnb»uf\
covernmenl. Inf A, a pover w
pt liiK f 3’o, 214, no CiihlHlukc ai
, ih"’, and Papeti, 213-4,

and 60 ( I A Wf I / vhfi P.u.'u,*.
313 V \ 4"*% nifluciicc till foil i ta
Na**! St,itc, RiC'A* IP,, ii^.o war on
twi> lionts, 3”’L aikl I ookc, 37s,

!MD£X

received H.’s war directives (on
Austria), 390-1 ; (on Chechoslovakia,
Danzig and Memel), 439, 455 (on
Danzig and Poland), 459-60 (on
Rumania), 561; its size, 399, 470-1,
600, 695; on war m Poland, 501,
505; attitude to war with Western
Pow'ers, 508, social conditions in,
580; retreat of, across Western
Europe, 6904; Volksgfenaclicf divi-
sions 111 , 694, 697; hnal leserves of,
695-6; and the Ardennes thrust,
697-700 712, dispersal over battle-
fronts, 70 Iff; desertions from, 711;
divided mto tw'O commands, 714;
and H.’s political testament, 725-9;
and Goebbets, 727; capitulation in
Italy, 731. (For campaigns see under
the names of the countries in which
they vverc fought.) Officer Corps
aftei 1918, 53, and politics, 60, and
the Leipzig tna!, 148; sympathetic
to Nazis, 161 , attracted by H.’s
nationalism, 231, and Roehm, 274,
concerned to keep pinileges, 279,
independence of, and H , 345 , and
Nazi attitude to Churches, 378;
and Himmler and the S.S , 378; and
Bioraberg’s m?sailiance, 379-80,
solidarity of, 382, and H , 612, 618,
672-3, 687-8. 726. Naw' 307,
471, 527-30, 533-4, 587, 623, 626,
655-6, 688, 725, 727 Naxal Officer
Corps: 378 Velk'^siuim 694-5, 701.
Gcrstcnmaiei, Eugen: 675.

Gessler, Otto 92-3.

Gestapo 252, 253, 264, 347, 380, 395,
396, 445, 522, o87.

Gibialtar. 551, 552, 555, 557, 560, 565,
572, 578.

Gicsing, Dr.: 658.

Gicslci, Paul: 726
Gilbert, Paikcr 128
Gisevms, Huns Beind 276-7, 425.
Gkiise-I loistcnaii, Gen Edmund 318,
389-95 passim
Glasi-Horci, Anna 19.

Gleich, von: 162
Glciwitz incidcnl 501-2
Globotsnik, Odilo 389, 390
Goebbets, Paul Joseph cbaiacter, 69,
151, 154, ()I8, 619, 660 - 7 , 706-7,
728-9, relationship with H , 124-5,
142, 176, 2ii, 356, 357, 644, (43,
684, 703, 709, 714, 716, 723, 724,
726, 730, and G. Strasser, 121, 124-
5, 1534, 201, 212, 215, 216; and
O Strasser, 124, 142; and Roehm,
264, 265, 270, 278; and Borrnann,
709, on Hindcnburg’s Presidency,
174, on Briicnmg, 188-9, on alli-

758

ance with Schleicher, 212, 216; and
Papen, June, 1933, 273 , propaganda
chief m Nazi Party, 126, 251;
Reichstag deputy, 126; used the
S.A. against Strasser’s supporters,
124; and Horst Wcssel, 150, and
SA. mutiny, 1930, 151, paity
programme, 1932, 181, 194; on
Nazi-Centre coalition, 188; im-
portance in Party, 153-4, 217;
roughly received in Ruhr, 193; and
the Reichstag fire, 237; Minister of
Public Enlightenment and Propa-
ganda, 251, his power, 284; in
Danzig, 466, and the Nov, 1939,
plot against H , 523 ; and Italian
Army, 538; and State administra-
tion, 618; on Brauchitsch, 613,
and brutality in Russia, 634; and
H.’s anti-semitism, 644; and plan
to take the Vatican, 649; and fall of
Mussolini, 650, 653; tried to split
Allied Powcis, 664, on tlic Officer
Coips, 673; and the 1944 bomh
attack on H , 684 , and total mobi-
lization, 694; and the Geneva Con-
vention, 667, 711; received report
of Roosevelt’s death, 712-3; and
astrology, 713, urged H. to stay
in Berlin, 714; with his family m
the bunker, 716, 717, at H.’s
wedding, 724; appointed Chan-
cellor, 726; Witnessed H.’s will and
political testament, 726, unaccept-
able to Army, 727; wrote “Appen-
dix” to H.’s testament, 728, as a
propagandist, 728; and death of
H , 730; tried to negotiate with
Russians, 731 ; killed his family and
then himself, 731.

Frau 703, 716, 717, 724.

Goerdcler, Karl. 519, 674, 677, 685, 687.

Oociin'u Reich Marshak Hermann
Wilhelm: background and char-
acter, 69, 70, 606, 619, 665-6
Relations with H , 357, 372, 550,
659, 709, 716, 718-9, 726; m May
Day Put\(lh 1923, 87, in Nov , 1923
Putsch, 96-101, abroad until 1927,
no, 126: Reichstag deputy, 1928,
126, on H ’s tactics of legality, 146,
impoitancc in Party, 153-4, 236,
'President of the Reichstag, 153,
186, 204-5, and industrialists, 156,
234-5: met Hindcnburg with H.,
168; negoti.ucd with Centre Party,
1932, 211, 231-2, talks with Musso-
lini, 1932, 211, opposed Strasser on
question of Nazi alliance with
Schleicher, 212, 216, Prussian

Minister of the Interior, 232, 237-7^

INDEX

246; and the Reichstag fire. 237-40;
General, 264; appointed Himmler
head of Gestapo, 264 ; and Roehm
purge, 265, 269, 274, 277; his
peisona! power, 284; \jsits to
Waisaw, 1935, 302; 1937 and 193S,
333 ; m charge of Geimaii economy,

327- 8, 366, 376, visit to Rome, 1937,

328- 9, at H \ secret conference on
foieign policy, 1937, 336; supported
H.’s war policy, 375 , Field-Marshal,
382, and Blomberg and Fntseh
cases, 379-81; and the AiLschhm,
389-98 pass wi, and Oechostovaku,
408, 425, 427, 429, 432, 440, 444,
445; and the Reich Defence
Council, 193K, 450-1 ; at fi N war
council, Mav, 1939, 46 m, realized
war inevitable if Germanv attacked
Poland, 475; discussed Russo-
German Pac^ with H., 487; tiled to
a\oid wai| 492; rnalry wnh
Ribhent^, 493; m final negotia-

Poland, 1939, 495-500
passim, appointed H\ successor,
503; on the British uitnnatum, 504-
5; doubted attack in W , 521; on
Russo-German Pact, 526, and
invasion of Norway, 53t), boasted
about Ii///>m//e, 537; at arniisikc
with France, 542, Reich Matsluh
544; kept in ignoiance of plan to
attack Russia, 550; ami Raeder,
551, 623, and North ^fnea, 551;
and Mcdiicnancan policy, 571;
on Crete and msaslon of Ru^^la,
587; m chaigo of economic policy
m Russia, 590; visit to Ital}, 1942,
described by Ciano, 620; on sub-
jection of Russia, 635-6, and tall
of Mussolini 650, blamed for
failure of air force, 656; on H.N
healtii, 657; attempt to negotiate
with Western Powers, 670; and
bomb attack on IL, 681, hh2;
H. on, and chance of spin in
Allied Powers, 712, left by H.
to negotiate with Allies. Tin; left
for the Redoubt, 717, 718; dis-
missed from all ollUvCs, 718-9,
720, 726, and Bounami, 7|9, 723,
and |\ecc n-igotiations, 723.

Goy, Jean: 3U0.

Graf, Ulrich: 73, 12k

Graetc, Albrecht \ on* lOi), HI, 115-6,

GrandcL 75,

Grassiiianii, Peter: 24K.

Graueit, I)i,. I So.

Great Biiiain. learmament, 29nf, 303,
304-5, 3u7, 433, and locUino,
302-3, 3u5, and Livense of Njiums,

310-11; air attacks on, 438, 54:,
550; Royal Na\y, 5k3, 572-3'
possible transfer of Gasefiimenl to
( anada, ^^5; am! c<nt of war,
refused to accept defeat, 544, 599,
or make -epande peace, 722, *^23,
and German i . ( jci man rearmament,
304-5; H.*s attitude to Brilain,

307- 9, 314, 322, G5a 49)4, 416.
422, 433-4, 461, 469-'"0, 4A8-.9k
503, 540, 543, ^82, 699, "’25,
Anglo-Ciernian Nasal Agiecjnent,

308- 9, 322-3, S40, a«r pa. t propowvk

314: interests iriecoikiLibic, 331,
33^-6, 337-ft; and ants-Semdisni,
434; appe.tcment p ended,
447-8; iinasam o( Bin uu pLuned
by li„ 544-6, 5 hi; Ro^il An
I'orccN raids on Cieiauny, 627,
6^5, 656, leccoe I lictmtu sui-
rcadei, 7^2; ithd Ah\ \u9ai, 31041 ;
mui AuMuj 298, k)k9: an!

Bidkanu 417, wU il/'I 314-5,
and CzCi h hi nakhi. *rii7,29, 41k
442-1, 446-., All iinJ I >hpi ksN
and framr: W, HI, 407-29
pa\sitm 475, 457. 490 491 49^*6^
512-1; and (trerce:

574, 5S5, 6%, mhi ihdh IID-II,
3IH, 329, 406, 532, and Xoiik
Afrira: 58fi-k f>22; and Pahifnl
457. 45N m, 4^2, 475, 4>4,
4S7, 488-91, 493, 512-3;

and Ramaiud' 4^9; and Riiiya’ 399,
466, 472, 476, 47 6 '*^8, 589; anj
Spaar 319-20, 13 k Bimdt

I mpac f fSVt' aha V\csWfii Poweis
u/n/ Allied Rsn Cl 'it I

Gicece: lino h ^uiaianfee lu, 4^9,
invaded bv I;G\, ^57, 561, 5?:k
H. 4ind It.dnm amis m, 562*36
Germans and. ‘6.\ N*6, 5'"2,

574, 5s^, 606, id U an bases

in, 574, vapitulalioii to (lermarp,
56"^, km-iue in, 606, ik'tidi nflcn-
s!ve m, 6>6 iSet ai\>> Balkans i

Gicnn. Ota. Ritki \ua: 720, 721, 72 y
724

(iieiiier, A^sef: 2"^, 42

GiucneoGi'/i Wilhelm, i4k 161-5, |6 6
i:i, r.k Ijsko 2l4

Giuhn, lirsi: martud Bkaiibierc, To-

M),

Ciizcsinski, Albert: Mk

Gaderiais, Gem llcui/: afui u>e of
panzci toKCs, Mo, 5 61, oppnsid
H. im stratepv, 601, 698, 699-7iXl,
701, 704, “'os, leiitvcd of luin-
mand, 610; pioinolai i lucf o!
Mall aflet In nab atLivk on IL, 6 S,
pledged iJthcei i issp. 6S.VI,

759

INDEX

cliecked Red Army advance, 1944,
690; replaced by Gen. Krebs, 717.
Guensche. 717, 730
Guinea, Spanish: 553.

Giirtner, Franz. 57, 77-9, 88, 104, 108,
114-6, 191.

Habicht, Thco: 298-9.

Hacha, Emil, President of Czecho-
slovakia: 345, 441-7, 499
Hagelm: 528.

Hagen, Lt. 684.

Hague Conference, 1929. 131.

Convention: 589.

Haider, Gen Franz: Chief of Staff,
replacing Beck, 412; m the Sudeten-
land talks, 413, 425; and H.. 469,
628, 707; and final negotutiom on
Poland, 1939, 501, reactions to
H;s stiatcgy, 517-8, 536-7, 548, 549,
601-2, 603 , and the 1944 bomb plot,
519, 520, 687; and preparations foi
war in Russia, 588; on Russian wai
production, 616, on Stalingrad,
628, convinced war lost by 1943,
657, dismissed, replaced bv Zeitzler,
628

Halifax, I'ismoti (later hst Eat I oj),
Biitish Foteign Sectetaiv' 335, 407,
437-8, 456, 487, 488, 495-500
passim

Hamburg; 91, 94, 171 17l/i
Hamilton, Duke of 591-2
Hammerstein-Equord, Kurt, Freihert
von 162-3,186,224-6.

Flanfstacngl, Putzi . 72,

Hanish, Reinliold: 28.

Hanke, Karl* 726.

Hanneken, Gen. Heiniann von* 425.
Hapsburg, House of 36, 39, 52, 287,
329-30, 389, 396, 397, 402, 404, 445,
452

Hardoum, de St.: 475
Harier, Kai! 58-9, 66-7.

“Hai/burg Fiont”. 169, 176.

Hasc, Getu Paul von 687
Hassell, Ulrich von* 319-20, 329, 382,
519, 674, 677 687
f-Iaubach Theodor. 675,

Haushofer, 6V/i kaii: 70, 290//.

Hayn, Hans. 278.

Hegel, G F 3^ 1-2, 368, 370, 663
Hciden, Erhard 125.

Heincmann, Gen 123.

Hemes, Edmund 112, 125, 166, 265,
275-6, 277

HciSs, Capt. . 85-7, 93-4
Hcl4Ikinath 116,246
Heildorf, Wolf Heinrich, Graf von: 156,
185, 225.

Henderson, Sir Nevile. on H.’s self-

760

delusion, 313; on Nazi rallies, 347,
told by Goermg of H ’s march on
Austria, 394, on Sodetenland, 415,
427 ; on H.’s use of self-determina-
tion, 448 ; and Weizsacker on
Poland, 466, met H, Aug, 1939,
483-5 ; and negotiations on Poland,
488-91, 495-500 passim, 504-5.
Henlein, Konrad: 404-17 passim, 446
Hess, Rudolf. Background and char-
acter, 45, 69-70, 705, and H , 109,
154, 353, 356, in May Day Putsch,
1923, 109, and Mein Kampf, 120,
on Nazi policy, 141, 256-7, in
control of Central Party Com-
mission, 217, at H-Papen talks,
1933, 220; m Cabinet, 261; and
Roehm purge, 261-4, and pension
for Frau Schmidt, 278; appointed
third in line of succession, 503 , at
French armistice, 542; flight to
Scotland, 591-3

Hesse, 171, 171/?; Boxiieirn papers,
182-3.

Piince Philip of: 389-90, 393, 399,
428, 447.

Heydebrcck, Peter von. 112, 278.
Heydrich, Reinhard. 264, 378, 501
Fliedler, Alois, see Hitler, Alois.

Johann Georg 18.

Stephen: 18.

Hieri, Constantin. 126
Hildebrandt, Fiiedrich. 122.

Hilgard, Eduard: 156
Himmler, Heinrich* background and
character, 125, 356, 667-9; and H.,
265, 438, 445, 709, 714, 715, 723,
726, and 1923 Putsch, 87, and
Gregor Strasser, 125, and Roehm
152, 265, 268, 269, 274, at talks
with H and Papen, 1933, 220; and
Gestapo, 26^, 395, 396, 445, and
the S S , 280, 284, S63, 525, 638,
and astrology, 356, and the Officer
Corps, 378, and Blomberg and
Fritsch, 379-81; in Sudetenland
crisis, 425, on the Munich Agree-
ment, 432, urged war policy, 438,
and the Nov , 1939, conspizacy, 520;
administered occupied Russia, 589-
90; his treatment of Russians, 634,
and of Jews, 643-4, and fall of
Mussolini, 648, Minister of the
interior, 665, tried to negotiate
with Western Powers, 670, 721-3;
approacned by July, 1944, con-
spiratois, 675, 676; and the bomb
attack on H, 681, 684, 687; in
command of Volksgienadier divi-
sions and Volks ^t arm, 694; and
Army deserters, 694, H on his

INDEX

relations with Party, 705; obvious
successor to H , 709; and Bormann,
709, 723; tried to peisuade H. to
leave Berlin, 715; negotiations
Bernadotte, 721-3; expelled from
Party and all olTiccs of State, 726.
Hindcnbiirg, F-M. Paul von Benecken-
dorf imd, Reich Piesident elected
President, 1 19, 168, 173, 175, 180-2;
and German reparations, 131, 133;
and the Nazi Party, 162-4, and the
Army, 161-3, 262, 279; relations
With Schleicher, 163-4, 213-4, and
H., 168-76, 189, 200-1, 223, 242-3,
250, 279, and the Reichsbamiet , 186,
and Bruening, 173, 189, 245; and
Papen, 211, 213, 271; at the Pots-
dam ceremony, March, 1933, 242-3,
and restoration of monarchy, 263,
282, his pohtical testament, 263,
282; illness and death, 275, 281.

Geih Oskar von;' 163, 166, 223-4, 282
Hinkei,

Reich Cluiih

ceiior iuui Fiiehier:

References to Mitlci arc grouped
undci the following headings, in this
order:

Private life.

Character and ideas outside politics
Oratoiy and use of piopaganda.
Political ideas.

Fconomic ideas
Political career

For his relationship with other
people, sec under those people^
names

For his foicign pohev towarvls
specific countries, see undei the
names of those countries

His pniate life \See C haptei 7, pail
IV, pp. 353-61, iJid the loilowimo
Born 20 April, iSS9, in *\ustiia,
early life and family hislorv, 18-24,
early illness, 24, at art school in
Munich, 24; to Vienna, 2^; his life
theic, 25-31; h^s Luvsiiit agiUnst
Hanisch, 28; his appcaiance m
1910, 29; belncndcd by the Jew,
Neumann, 29, dodged conscription,
4! , found, exainmcd, lejvcted, 41
\olimteeied tor seivicc m the I ist
Regiment, 45 ; his war sei \ ice, 4^-6 ,
wounded, giisscd and decorated, 46 ;
did casual Aimv lobs altei the war,
55-6: to Mimieh, 1919, 57, iii-
\estjgatcd the (jciman Woikcis’
Party for the Arinv, 57 , and (Oined
it, 58, to Berlin to contact nationa-

list gioups, 66, first visit to Berchtes-
gaden, 71, visited the Wagncis at
Bayreuth, 72, his exhibitionism iit a
party, 74; his dubious source of
income, 74: described himself as
'‘King of Munich " 74; his appear-
ance up to 1929, 75, imprisoned for
political violence, 1922, 76 : ic-
leascd, 79, m Noxembcf Puiich^
1923, mjyied, lOI; on trial, 103-6,
impusoned, 108-10; wrote fust pait
oiW fein Kampfm Laiidsbergprr‘On,
109-10; deportation recommended,
114; released on parole, 115; and
question ot German cili/cn%hip,
118; h»s mcoinc, 120, completed
Mein Kampf Ai Bcrclitesp idcn, 120,
naturalized, 1932, 126-7, ISO;

triumphal entry into Vienna, 39 (k
piivate life sacnficcil, 517; rarels
spoke in public in 1940, 579-80,
his htallh, 614; refused to eat with
his staff otlicCTs, 629; pin steal ctai-
dition, 1943, 657-8, his way of hte,
659-61; his iiiiwillmgness to speak
in public, 662, hn demeanour afta
the bomb plot of Jii!,v, I94*t, 680-9,
hisprnate hie, 7UH: hts hcallli,
701-4, 717, annoimccd fie was going
to shoot luniself, 71H; his menud
state, 719, married L'va Buum 721,
oxide his will, 726, and limn
self, 730

//n (fiLiracier am! s/ea-i (mlMuc
pelmet. iSivi haptcr7,pp
and the folk winy r bid* 43
47, M), 450, Ml (FI

705, 706-7, “ns, ^724, rrilopue,
/7<a.ow2. didike 4)f work, %h «'n
leaihng 43; luistialioii satislsd
by w ir, 44, 48, bfaicts :n acli*fx,
46; inT'du'ikc, 80. eiw iid\e m
Niwembei I92?\ HsI; hevtaisv,
4‘i3, 5204 ,

deuh.innur at I icikli auiiiCcv
cetvniom, M2; daseiipuua ol b'

Si'!ki. 5 "^'3-4. nevcf misted, i \
S'O Hh-e*'* udLikc, 6I4 , Uk f’nuilr
ttmvei*>ation ard thi ipui! 'v «?l his
n.iad, 6l5*o, rjo MmimsSiuUvc
abilii\, 61S-9; belief m his iiiise*'fi
M6, power ol ivrakisHFU
peraiia! lowiliy to Miow fiat, Ms
peiwuial magnet sni, "ite; .aid
a^luiiovv 713

Hn o/u/on iwJ uu o/ i dfi hI
I set i lunfa 7 paiP* I and li, po
34U-9, and the lolhmmgi malurw
5‘k 61, (4. ■' V 424, 462, piofa-

gaiida, 38-9, 49 Vi, (14, |26
133, 139, 15F 2ij3

761

INDEX

His political ideas: (See Chapter 7,
parts I, Ilf, V and VI, pp. 340-3, V%
53, 361-6, 366-71 and the folh‘a\-
ing): attitude to working dass, 33,
hatred of Social Democracy, 33,
37, 39, 68, 255-6, of Communism,
35, 106, 116, 118, 177-9, 305, 334,
448, 563; and i^trliamcniary demo-
cracy, 35, 50, 129, 145 ; his faiiaiical
nationalism, 36-7, and monaichy,
39, 263 ; and use oi force and Icr^oi-
ism, 49, 64-5, 79, 159, 347, 432, 616,
711; hiS ideas second-hand, 62; on
dictatorship, 106; on Putsch tech-
nique, 107; and the turopean New
Order, 285, 582-3, o03-5, 616, 6^*4;
and politics of domination, 326,
634.

His economic uken 13o, 119, 153,
326-8, 348, 366, 375-6, 450-1, 656

His politual caieci Sea Chapter 7,
parts 1! ard Vil, pp 3-13-9, 371-3,
and the lolloping* inicicst in
politics ai cured, 30, 54, political
skill developing, 61; still had oily
provincial ii nutrcc, 62, cc-mnultcd
himself nevei to use force, 80,
political technique compaicd with
Lenm’s, S4/i; m IVfay Day Putsch,
1923 86-8, retiicd fiom politics for
hve months, 88, advocating revolu-
tion, Sept , 1923, 91; in November
Putsch, 1923, 96-iOi; showed hiS
developing skill, 102-3, at trial had
a national audience foi first time,
103-4; re-foimcd Nazi Party, 116;
enforced new policy of legality, 1 17-
8, 149-51, 159, 164, 172, 201-3, 233,
237, 241-2, 244-5, 252, never quali-
fied to sit m Reichstag, 126-7, broke
into national politics, 133, Chan-
cellor, 167, 226, most powerful
political leader m Germanv,
August, 1932, 196-7, give.' full legal
powers, 245, 251, ard the Pre-
sidency, 281-2; his nohiiutl tactics,
292; ptonoLinccmcHts in council on
his foreign pohey, May, 1935, 305-6,
Nov., 1937, 336-9, 374-5; and m the
Reichstag, Anuh 1939, 46nr, hc-
canie €i)mmvinder-in-Chier of the
Armed Foiccs, 381: held wat
councils on political and strategic
aims, 469-70, 481-3, 520-1, 575-6,
589 , took command of the ‘\im> m
the field, 612-3, ceased to have
effecUve control over the German
Aiiuy, 710-11: washed his hands of
military command, 715, handed
over pi‘!itica: ieadeislap to Doenitz
and Goeihe!% 726, and h.'* Party

contiol to Boiinann, 726, in liis
pohtical testament, 724, 728; his
political skill analysed, 735fF.

Sec also Nazi Party, Geimany;
Comtitutmr Geimany, Armed
toues, and Anti-Hitler con-
rpiiacics

Pliticr, Alois, / u/7i£7 of Adolf 18-20, 24.

Rlara, modiei of Adolf . 20, 24-5.

Hitler Youth 126,207,717-8,731/1.

Hoare-Laval Pact. 311,

Hoeppner, Gen Erich. 413, 610, 682,
687

Hoess, Rudolf: 642-3.

Hoffman, Johannes: 55, 56

Hoflniann, Hau Carola* 357.

Heinrich {H's photographer): 73, 357,
359, 658.

Plenny. 357.

Hohenzcilcin, House of: 52.

Holland attack on, 438, 518, 521;
warned by Italy of invasion, 524;
capitulated, 537, forced labour
637, coastal defences in, 1944, 678-
9; held by Geimany for V2 sites,
695.

Holstc, Gen : 270

Hoppner, Gea Each 413, 610, 682, 687

Hoithy, Miitlos, Regent oj Hungary.
410

Hoss, Rudolf 642-3.

Hossbach, Gen. Friediich: 336.

Holh, Gen 601,

Hugenberg, Alfied and German
National Patty, 131; lelationship
with H. and Nazi Party, 131-5, 165,
169, 211, 223-4, responsibility for
H 's success, 231; financed by
industry, 157, negotiations with
Bruenmg, 173-4, and Papen, 190;
nimislncs held, 232, 251.

Huhulrm, Adolf. 99, 152.

Hungaiy: 37, 55, 298 Relations with
Geimany duiing annexation of
Cztciiosiovakia, 436-46, m 1939,
466, in invasion of Russia, 507,
574, 583, 588, 610, 628, 655, 695,
096, 700, discussed by Germany
ana Pvussia, 570, with Austiia, 318;
with Czechoslovakia, 410, 417, 418,
‘-Du, 43f)-46, 117/// Fiance, 298, with
Itolv, 436, and Ruthenm, 452, 455,
and Tiansylvauia, 456, 561; signed
Tiipartite* Pact, 583, and Anti-
Comintcrn Pact, 605//

1. G. Farben ' 190, 234.

India* 337,

Indian Ocean. 568

Inftation in Germany; see under Ger-

iSDl'X

many. Social mid Economic Cop-
diiions.

International Court: and Rhineland, 3 15.

Iran: 622, 699. (See also Persian Gulf.)

Iraq: 586, 587, 595.

Ii eland; 337, 546

Italy independence of, 36; reaimamcnt,
321; and the Anti-Conn Pier n Pact,
328, 605/1, and the Pact of Steel,
406, 436, 467-8, 494, 524 , 737, and
the Tiipartite Pact, 435-6, 563-4,
567-8, 609, M’ar m, 647-54 The
Fascist Grand Council, 647; dis-
solution of Fascisl Party, 648;
armistice uith A { lied Poweis, 650,
the Italian Social Republic, 652-4;
Italian Army, 491, 524 Italian
Fleet, 649 The Gamun-lwliaii
alliance 307-11, 320-2, 328, 37^,
435-6, 466-9, 485, 493, 4^5, 503,
524-5, 563-4, 567-8, 575, 578, 600,
620, 621, 645/ 737, wid Ahyssima:
310, sanr*;;;iis, 311; Hoaic-Ia\al

.P rf and Aihanu. 447, 460,

4(5 /, occiipatnm ti, St-d, Amo
difficulties in, 5 73, 58 R and Aiistio-
German Amchhos 310, 318, 321,
329-32, 406, 562; ami Balkans:
322, co-operation with Germany in,
562-5, 584-5, 654, and Czu‘ho-
&!o\akia' reaction to German
annexation, 447; and Enpt' 541,
562, 564, 573-4, and I ranee:
sanctions and Hearc-La\al Pact,
310-11, 318; dimands on 'fiinisia,
Corsica and Nice, 436, 438, 541,
attack on, 538; and Great BtitaiP‘
resentment at Anglr-Ciei man Isa\al
Pact, 309, and uinctions, 'ttO-ll,
318; Agi cement ft| 1937, 329; am!
Bntish colonial enipnc, 337; and
Biitish blockade, 632; and Greece:
attack on, ^57, 564, up.»et H \
plans, 572; and 43o,

ami Japan in liipartitc ikitl, 435-6,
5634, 567-8, 6CI9, and the Middle
East’ reaction to Gciman plan^ in,
551, 552, 554-5, 557-9, 562, 564,
ami hmih Africa 551, 558, 568,
5H6, 596; and PoUnd' ctaicein .a
Ciciinan incncs on, 47o-9, ./

Jiussia sir fucion ol h‘oS0-( leiniun
negotialioiis, 476, 509, 524, df -

. cussed at llusHvijcmian talks,
1939, 4S5, 4u7, I'cpLctcd by 11 m
favour of Rusmu, 487, 509; Italusu
tioops in, 6U), (CC), and Sfuin, 319-
20, \i^it of Sufier to Rome, 554,
and YmyOshnia, 322, ad\ised b\
Pobbeniit^p to in\.,de, 4^8
also Ciano mui Mussohni )

Japan: m Manchukuo, 311, 322; an ?
the Anli-Ccrmiitein Pact, 324, and
the British EmpiYe, 337, 622;
alliance vath Germany and Italv,
378, 435-6, 5634, 567-8, 577, 578,
579, 609, and the Dutch East Indies,
433 , relations with Russia, 480, 4tS5,
568, 577-8, 607, end the Russo-
Gemian Fact. 485, 4^7, aims in
Eastern A^aa, 568; relations with
U S A., 60T

Jews: no access to professions, 253;
killed m the Rochm purge, 27S; ard
the Nuremberg Laws, 309-10;
numbers d..suoycd. 371 ; in \'!enna,
397-8, the poyt^ ni of November,
434; cxpuisions fioiii and
cxtsiirinatmn ot, m Ddaiui 453,
525; mass cslcnninatKHi of, 639,
6414. (See a! o ^fili-Scmitisrn i
Jo<ll, Gen Allied Mclationsw tnll, 386,
620, 659, 704, 718; and H *s pro-
mise^ fo tiic Armv, 149-50, and
rile Rhineland, 313; at Il-Sclm-
schrapu mceling, 193»S, 386; i>n die
si/e <d the Amiy, 399; m Sudeten*
land negotuifioiis, 411, on the
Munich ayiccmcnl, 430: on H2s
iiitcic‘1 in the invasion ol Noiwa>,
529-R), and il.N intciilitm to alUik
Riisoa, 547 , planned the luuisiuii of
\iigosU\ia, 5^4; inviMiixitcd
Caucasus lionl lot II., 629; sc-
pLued h\ Ircn, \ori Faulus 629,
at Stall conference on ltai>, 14^,
6*19, and fall of \fussoimc 6Ml.
tk's. nbed If % hcadquartcis la
1943, 659; and the Jii’n, P4 L bomb
altaek on I! , 681, 68^. and the
Anlennes i lun* oe. 1944, 69'^, o‘/9,
skiAtulb l.auilkd H., 701, oulcicd
W *0 to the R,.dcabt, 7D, and
1L\ fhumed SiUCKk*, 718, signed
.suneifdu of (icimtisis, 732.

John, Han . 674
(Hto 674,

Jimg4d‘Mi;27l,
fiudclL 5A
,L.r c, hau“ TP, E L
I impels: 53,

K s \s, MohsenaH ‘ 2^**4, 24‘'x
kahi, Glia, son: 56, a*, 9FI05, |li'\

201, 278

k a'H.1, Jakt^'s trs,

kiiiL’'cnth, li'aliuivi, (not sou. 161,

2^1.

kaltcnluuanei , I if. f (-^4,
h u . npi 1 erlwh i 8 ** ',;« r a ? g n 8
Kaasa, kahnnn iluuuahm ionw^t
Minister. 3iPt,

7CG^

INDEX

BCapP Putsch (Berlin, 1920): 56, 84, 91,
106, 193.

Karmasin, Franz’ 440, 441, 442.
Kaufmami, Karl: 122.

Keitel, Oe/i, Wilhelm: head of O K W ,
382; at meeting of H. and Schusch-
nigg, 1938, 386, and the Anschluss,
389, 394; and Czechoslovakia, 402,
405, 408, 409, 412, 413, 432, 433,
444, 445; at ll.'s \vai council, May,
1939, 469; and war on Poland, 4H9,
491; learned H meant to strike
west, 512; received first strategic
instructions from H., 517-8; and
the invasion of Russia, 548; and
plans for invasion of Britain, 544,
546; at armistice meeting on fall of
France, 541, 542; relations with H ,
620, 659, 718, on occupation oi
Russia, 635-6. and the July, 1944,
bomb plot, 681, 682, 684; at H.’s
conference on the Ardennes thrust,
1944, 699, ordered to the Redoubt,
715; received H ’s last message, 729.
Keliogg-Bnand Pact: 127
Kempka, Erich : 730
Kempner, Dr, R. W. M . 158
Keppler, Wilhelm: 156, 220, 256, 385-6,
389, 392, 393, 442.

Kerri, Hans- 122.

Kesscinng, F.-Af. Albert* 622, 650, 652,
678, 696, 710, 714
Kirdorf, Emil* 133, 156-7.

Klausener, Erich: 272, 278
Kleist, F.-A/. Ewald von* 536, 600.
Klintsch, Johann Ulrich 66.

Kluge, F.-M Gunther von* 604, 680,
686, 691.

Knepper, H, G * ! 56,

Kmilmg, Eiiiien von: 77, 79, 91.

Koch, Ericlr 122, 290/;, 633, 634, 637.
Kocstring* 549.

Koller, Gen. Karl* 715, 718.

Konopath: 126.

Krausser, FiUz, Riitc} von 277.

Krebs, Gen. Hans. 717, 726,
Kreditansiali. failure of. 159-60.
‘'Kreisau Ciide’h 674-5
Kressenstcin, Gen Kress von. 94
Kncbei, Co! - 85, 87, 99-100, 104, 109,
115,

Krosigk, Lilt/ Graf Schweiin von
281, 712, 726.

Kmpps* 131, 14!, 191, 234-5, 256, 274,
440, 63 7«.

Kun, Bela 55.

Lvbour Front, .see umki Gemuny,
Social and Eamomu Conditions.
Lahousen, Gen. Erwin. 502
Lammers, Han^ Heiiiiich* 636

764

Land reform m 1920 Nazi programme:

68 .

Land settlement, Bruening and* 187;

Schleicher and 218, 223.
Landsberg puson, H. in: 109-10, 348.
Langbehn, D/ Carl 668, 675.

Latvia and Germany, 1939, 466, and
Russo-German Pact, 486, annexed
by Russia, 507, 560. (See also
Baltic States.)

Lausanne, Reparations Conference . 186
Laval, Pieire. Ffcnch Foieign Mumtei,
300-1: and Abysinnia, 311, H. on,
556, dismissed, 558, summoned by
11,630-1.

League of Nations: and Silesian plebis-
cite, 1921 , 77 , Germany’s admission,
119; H. on, 129, 462, 510, with-
diavval of Germany, 293-4; and
Russia, 300; and German rearma-
ment, 305, and Abysmnia, 310-11;
and Japanese aggiession, 311,
Germany prepared to ^e-enter, 314,
and the Rhineland, 315; Cv^man-
Itahan agiecment on, 321; with-
drawal of sanctions against Italy,
318; German tactics on Non-
Inteivcntion Committee, 334, and
Austio-German Anschluss, 399,
and Czechoslovakia, 402
Lebemniimv H on German need of
337-9, 446,448, 469,513
Leber, Julius. 675, 677
Lceb, F-M., Wilhelm, Rittcf von. 246,
425, 534, 597, 671.

Lcgalitv . H ’s policy of, in Germany, 117-
8, 149-51, 159, 164, 172,201-3, 233,
237, 241-2, 244-5. 252, 345; in
relations with foieign States, 296,
m the Anschluss, 392, 431; in
Czccnoslovakia, 431, 443, 445.
Leipait, Theodor* 248.^

Leipzig , Inal of Schermger et al 148-50.
Lenin, V. I * technique compared with
H’s 84n.

L conoid IIL Fmg of the Belgians' 334
LcKhcnfeid, Hugo, 6/a/ von* 76-7.

I euschner, Wilhelm 675.

Ley, Robert and Strassers, 122, 6aw-
leitet of Cologne, 156, replaced G
Stiasser, controlled Labour Front,
248, power in State, 284, and H,
356, visited Italy, Dec , 1939, 524,
chatactei. 619, 670; in radicah
gioup, 709, m H.’s political testa-
ment, 726

Liebitsky, Col * 388
Lingc, Heinz* 717, 730
Lippe 171/1 ; election, 1933, 222
Lipski, Josef. 333, 453, 454, 456, 457,
458, 500, 501

INDEX

List, Wilhelm: 629.

Lithuania, and Germany, 306, 455, 466;
and Memel, 306, 437, 466, and
Poland, 301, Russo-German dis-
cussions on, 486, 569, 594, annexed
by Russia, 507, 560. (See also Baltic
States }

Little Entente (Czechosio\akia, Ru-
mania and Yugoslavia): 410.

Litvinov, Maxim, Russian Foreign
Mmisiei 474, 483.

Lloyd George, David (latei D/ Fail),
Prime Minister: 325, 556

Locarno Pact: negotiated 1925, 118-9;
Streseman opposed its extension,
296; Britain and France proposed
strengthening, 302-3; reafliimed by
Britain, Fiance and Italy, 305, H.
accepted Germany's obligations
under, 307; Germany and, 312-7;
and re-occupation of Rhineland,
313-7; German-ltahan agreement
on new pacjtf 321 , and Belgium, 334-

LorSiz, Heinz: 721, 723.

Lieut., 148.

Lossow, Gen, Otto von. 80, 83, 85-8, 91-
106, 108,201.

Lubbe, Marmus van dcr: 237-9.

Lubbert, Erich. 156.

Lubeck. llln,

Ludecke, Kurt: 75, 114, 117-8, 206, 349.

Ludendorff, F.-M, Ench. 51-2, 78, 89,
96-102, 104, 108, 110-16, 119, 289,
506, 539

Ludm, Lt. Hans- 148, 161.

Ludwig 11, King of Bavana, 342,

III, King of Bavaria 45, 55.

Lueger, Karl: 32, 40, 167.

Luftwaffe, see under Germany: Armed
Forces, Air Force,

Luther, Dr, Hans* 251.

Luttwitz, Gen, Walther von: 84, 91.

Lutze, Viktor: 275, 280, 619, 662.

Luxembourg. H. on occupation of, 518.

Mach . 440.

Mackensen, F.-M, August von: 242, 304.

Madeira* 552, 557

Magmot Line* Czech defences com-
pared with, 402, H. on, 483, m
invasion of France by Germany,
534-5.

»Ma!ta. 541, 587, 622.

Maltzan, Ago von * 474.

Mancliukuo: 311, 322, 577.

Maiioilescu, Mihai, Rumaniun Foreign
Minister * 561.

Manpower shortage m Germany, see
under Geimany, Social and teonO”
mic condiiions.

Manstem, F.-M, Fritz Ench von: 377,

535, 539, 611, 631, 672.

Manteuffcl, Gen Hasso : 698.

Manzialy, Fraulem, 111,

Maixisni, see Communism.

Masaryk, T. G , President of Czedw-
Slovak Republic 444.

Mastny, Dr, Voytech: 394.

Matsuoka, Yosuka, Japanese Foreign
Minister, 577, 579,584,594.
Maurice, Emil: 65, 109, 275, 358.

Max, Prince of Baden, German Chan-
cellar: 51.

May Day Putsch, Munich, 1 923 : 86-8.
Mecklenburg-Schwcrin . 1 71 /i.

-Strelitz: llln,

Mediterranean area: Italy assured of
German disinterest m, 447, 479;
German operations in, 550-9, 621;
political state, 1941, 586, H.\
neglect of, 62 1 ; Allied landings in,
647, freedom of sea, 329; H/s an
attacks on Royal ^fa\y, 572-3. hSVr
also Mcditeiranean countries undei
their own names.)

Meinecke, Fiieduch. 1 61-3, 169, 737.
MemKampf' 109-10, 120,

Meissner, Otto: 166, 174, l9Kw, 200, 212,

Memel: Geimany and, 306, 437, 438-9,

455, 456, 465.

Mend, Hans: 47.

Middle Classes m (lenmiiy: 40, 136-”^

142-4

Middle Hast: German operations in,
550-9; impoiiancc to British Fm
pile, 550; Mussolim and stiateg'.
in, 622, H. on Russian amH m, 699.
(See also Mediteiranean area, I
MierendoilF, ( atlo* 675.

Miklas, Wilhelm, Picsufent of the
Austrian Repubiw 391, 393.
Mikoyan, Anastas 1 : 474.

Milan, Strikes m, ^>46.

M It fold, Liiity: 357.

Model, />A/. Walter: 67.1, 690, 69i, 6u2
693, 694, 700, 710
Mochl, Gen, Arnold von. 56.

Mohnkc, Hans. 717
Molotov, VyaehcsLiv M ; Ruvsian
Foreign MmiMif, 474, and Kusso-
Geiman agieemeiits, 1919, 480,
485 . commiinii|ue with Rihheat^'op
at end ci Gciiiuio-Pidish wai,
No\„ Ivdtk Vfx, vsilh if aid
Ribbcnliop, 558, 56f).72, ohjected
U) Ocniun guaiaiilcc lo Rumaiiki,
562; tiicil k) aseif couOkt with
Geimany, 595.

Moltke, Ural llelmutli von; 675, 67,

Mongolia' 568.

705

INDEX

nery, K-M. Viscount: 629.
i«sip&via# see Bohemia- Moi avia.
Moravska-Ostrava: 412, 443.

Morel!, Dn: 445, 658-60, 701, 702, 705,
716,717.

Morgenthay Flan: 693-4.

Morocco. 541, 552, 553, 55 K 555, 629.

Moscow, Siege of: 606-7.

Mosley, Sir Oswald: 357

Mueiilmann, Dr. Kajetan: 385.

Mueller, llcimann, ijennan Chuncellor:
94, 166, 214.

Joseph* 676,

Muff, Gen.: 392, 393.

Muker. 85.

Munder: 123.

Mumch: revolution in, 1918, 55; Ger-
man Workers’ Paitv meetings, 58-9;
x\1a> Duv Puhch, 1923, 86-7, ten-
sion in, 1923, 95 , November Putsch,
1923, 96-101 ; von f.pp’s coup il\tat,
1933, 246. Vutei laemh ,uie Veieine
Mimchcn, 85.

Mimicii Agreement, 1938, 430, 432,
Chui chili on, 430-1 ; criticized in
Bnlaiii and Fiance, 433, ^17 {See
also Czechoslovak Id.)

Mussolini, Bciiito, Dace: Peisona!
lelatiuiiship with H , 270, 331, 432,
482, 532-3, 575, 576, 577, 596, 604,
645, 646; iTiarch on Rome, 1922,
effect of in Daurui, 78; tactics
copied by Nazis, 169; gov eminent
of, 1922, 199; Fascist Giand Coim-
Ciiand, 241,^>47;talkswUhli , 1933,
270; and Ausiiun independence,
298-9, 310, 317-8, 329, 332, and the
Aiistio-Gcrman Anschluss, 387, 383,
389-90, 3934, 398, his ambitions
on the Danube, 310, and Absssmid,
310, 322; and ^HaihenVocig, 317;
and I'lanco, 319, 559, talks with
Gociing, 1937, on AusUia, 329,
\Lsil to Gemianj, 1937, 330-1;
leaction to proposed Gemn.n-
Italun Pact, 4r>6, and If \ mo\e> m
i Zcvhoslov.Aks -ao', 42"-9 (Side-
ten crisis K iiilluencc on H. m
Munich talks, 4i2, and the ihm-
gary-C/eclKHlovala.a boidwi, -^36;
and H.N mmcxalnn <*f C/wvhcMlo-
vakia, 447, message fiom Roose-
velt, 1939, 461, and \ibania, do"^;
and negotiations In Pact ci Steel,
467-9; Mig'csied an miei national
peace cunfeience, 1939, 476, feared
outbreak ts ‘'cneial \.ai on i\caiid,
477-9, and Croatia xmd Dalmatia,
490, impressed b> Russo-Geiman
Pact, 1939, 491 , unrcsnoiviM with
H. on Lkeamud wax \ath

Poland, 490-1; and the Pact of
Steel, 494, sUll proposing an mter-
national confeience, 494, attempts
at mcciiation. Sept., 1939, 504; re-
action to German success m Poland, /
508-9, 524 , eager to promote peace,
509, his impoitance to Germany
520, 524, li .d Holland and Belgium
warned of inva:>ion, 524; letter to
H , Dec, 1939, 524-5; talked into
inteivcntion by H , 532-3; demands
on Fiance, 540-1, and German
plan? m Middle hast, 551-9; met
Franco, 1941, 559, his Balkan
ambitions rcahzcd by H., 562-6; Iils
anger at H.’s settlement m Ru-
mania, 563-4* attack on Greece,
disconccited il 564, 573; met H
at Floience, 19-^0, 565, and at the
Bcighof, 1941, 576; kept m the dark
about H ’s plans in Russia, 575, 577,
5%, oideied by FL to man the
YugosLiv-Aibania^ frontier, 584;
met H., June, 1941, 595 6* still
Ignored on Russian invasion plans
until 21 June, 1941, 5%; visited
Russian Font, Aug., 1941, 603-4;
and the INew OiUvi, lOao, 648,
piloted FL’s airciaft, 604, suspicious
of tuppioikcntcnf between Ger-
many and \«chy Fiance, 604. re-
action to war between Japan and
U.S A., 608, met FL, Apl., 1942,620;
discussed Middle East strategy, 622;
gratilKd by Geiman occupation of
wltole of France, 631, ins illness,
1943, 645, received letter of en-
couiagemcnt from H., 645; visit to
H , ApL, 1943, 646; gave m to FI.’s
pel suasion, 646, met H., July, 1943,
647, opposed by the Fascist Grand
Council, 617; and dismissed by
King, 648; imprisoned, 648; lescuc
of, W9, 652 ; his state of health arxd
mind when rt'^cued, 652-3, head*
of Italian Social Republic, 652-4;
and death of Ciano, 653, ins own
death, 653, 729.

Edda. 653
\ lUoHO 652

Mutschmunn, Maitm. 140.

Nvpoieon Bonaparte. 539, 609, 617,
620, 735.

“National Redoubt, The”* 714, 715.
National Sociali'aii: conditions m which
It thined, 80; its i evolutionary
chaiacter, 252; and vat, 326; and
the German Army, 612, its nihiksm,
7Gv6-", produced ro new ideas, 736
looted in Gum in iiistoiy, 737,

766

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